The Adventures of Matt Parkman
by Gamebird
Summary: Matt Parkman becomes determined to use any tool at his disposal to be a hero. He loses himself in the process, abusing people with his ability. It takes his father's involvement to save him.
1. The Adventures of Matt Parkman

**The Adventures of Matt Parkman**

**A/N: This is a 20 or so chapter story I'll be updating every other day. It's canon for Matt Parkman through the episode "Close to You", but not "The Art of Deception," "The Wall" or "Brave New World." The beginning is set in the early spring of 2010; the end at approximately July 2010. Matt is in Los Angeles, living with Janice and little Matty, trying to figure out a way to be a stay-at-home father and the hero he thinks he is meant to be.**

**He does not succeed. This story is a tragedy. It tells the tale of power and temptation corrupting someone who had the best of intentions. It goes to some pretty dark places, just so you know.**

**Warnings (for the entire story, not this particular chapter): Physical and emotional abuse, drug use and abuse, adult themes, moral ambiguity, vulgar language (f word). No graphic sex, though sex is mentioned.**

**For those who have read my story Shattered Identity, this is the back story for Matt Parkman in that AU. It starts a little after Gabriel escapes from the Omaha facility, but no characters from that storyline will appear in this story except Maury Parkman.**

**As usual for my stories, **_italics_** are thoughts. **_Italic and underlined_** are mental commands ("push a thought" or "a whammy"). Bold is forceful emphasis. Italic in the context of a quoted statement is a pitch-change emphasis.**

_I'm not a coward. I won't be afraid. I can do this, I can change things. I can save people. I can help. It doesn't always go bad, doesn't always have to go bad. _Matt stood before a blank easel, trying to work himself up to painting the future. He waited for inspiration to take him, for the muse to show him the way. Nothing happened.

He'd been trying this off and on for months, ever since Noah had drug him out of the house and convinced him to use his powers on that cellist. He didn't like being blind-sided by stuff like that, but his precognition wasn't working. He was getting really desperate.

He paced restlessly. Eventually he doodled. He mixed paint, thinking he'd just paint something normal and non-future, even if his artistry without his ability was rather limited. He could use the practice. He sniffed the fumes from the supplies. It smelled… interesting. He breathed them in more deeply and laughed at himself for even being tempted.

The idea refused to leave him, though, as he rendered the street outside his window onto his canvas. When he was done, he sat and read the labels on the paint cans, trying to remember how a person concentrated this stuff enough to get high off of it. At first it was just idle speculation – _I wonder how?_ Then he looked at the stack of blank canvases and his own uninspired painting. He'd been at this for so long and it had yielded nothing – not a single premonition of the future.

Isaac had done a lot of his future paintings while high. _Maybe I just need to get high_, Parkman thought. He considered the spirit journey he'd gone on in Africa. He'd been in an altered state then too. He didn't think it had made him a bad person… addiction was just a danger, a danger that might be worth the risk if he were able to use his foresight to save people.

_I don't want to be out buying street drugs… wait… I don't have to buy them. I could… just take them… with my other ability, just like making that cellist trust us. _He swallowed, thinking it through. _It's not bad if I'm doing it to drug dealers and addicts, is it?_

Matt Parkman had gone to an addiction therapy group for nearly two months, seeking to recover from overusing his powers. He'd been surprised to find it was one of the places drug addicts connected and found each other. It's a socially condoned meeting of like-minded individuals, all under the cover of getting help for their problem. Some were sincere in seeking reform, but some weren't.

Many of the discussions could be read like "how to be a successful drug addict" manuals. There were discussions of how each person got started, where they went wrong, how they knew when they had a problem and how their problem impacted the people in their life. For the other addicts in the room, it was an opportunity to compare notes and work out how to continue with their addiction without getting caught and without their obsession destroying the rest of their life.

Matt was well versed in where to find drugs and how to conceal them. His experiences in the therapy groups had been more illuminating than his work as a policeman had been. The police _guessed_. They were always four steps behind the perpetrators and they never caught people who had their problems under control. The addicts - they **knew**. That was where the real information was, shared behind closed doors with a nod, a wink, and a promise of confidentiality.

Parkman drove around town. To an observer, it might have looked aimless, but he was looking for something specific. He stopped at a convenience store where a couple girls were hanging out. He approached the store, then seemed to change his mind and walked over to them. The older of them looked at him. "Hey." He jerked his head upward by way of greeting. "What's going on?"

The girl, all of sixteen or seventeen, gave him a hostile look. Her thirteen year old companion looked at him more blankly, confused by his interest in them. The older girl had been approached many times by boys and men by this stage of her life. Matt's appearance did not put him in the category of males she would respond favorably to. She answered him, "We're waiting for our **mom**. She should be here to pick us up _**any minute**_." She gave him her best teenaged glower, refined by years of practice.

Matt scanned through their thoughts briefly, reading her superiority beginning to edge with fear when he didn't go away immediately. They didn't have what he wanted. He turned and walked away, getting back in his car and continuing his search.

This was one of the key issues with crime. A criminal could make any number of mistakes and hunt down false leads in the course of finding a good one. A con could approach person after person, making innocuous, harmless inquiries until he found the right mark.

Matt found several other young people who turned him down in different ways. One young man flipped him the bird and even went so far as to throw a rock at him. Matt vowed that his son would never turn out like these street ruffians. He hated these kinds of people, having had the frustrating experience of trying to keep them in line as a policeman.

The last person he approached was a girl lounging with a boy her age. Both looked fourteen or fifteen. He asked her what was up and she asked him if he could buy her some cigarettes. There was no preamble. It wasn't code for anything more significant. She wanted smokes and at her age couldn't get them. If she asked every person who came by, then eventually someone would get her some. She worked the same way most criminals did.

Matt went inside the store, bought a couple cokes, a bag of Doritos and a pack of cigarettes. He walked out and gave her the bag, pulling out one of the cokes for himself. He leaned on the brick façade, far enough away from them that he didn't look like he was with them. The girl looked in the sack and fished around until she found the cigarettes. She called out to him, "Thanks!" Her friend pulled out the chips and opened them. She started fighting with him over whose chips they were.

Parkman waited, listening to their thoughts. So far, everything was on the surface. Her name was Joey, like a baby kangaroo. His was Terrance. Eventually they settled on sharing the chips, but the coke was the boy's and she got the cigarettes. She pocketed them quickly and with surprising discretion for a woman of her age. They began to leave, her intending to find a place to enjoy her ill-gotten gains, the boy wanting to get away from the creepy guy who'd bought the stuff for them and obviously wanted something else.

Matt suggested to the girl, _You want to do something to thank me._ He called out, "Hey!"

She turned, looking back at him thoughtfully, and walked over. The boy huffed and shuffled his feet indecisively. "Joey! Come on." She ignored him.

She addressed her benefactor, "Hey… um, thanks. You know. Do you want something?" She looked over at his car. Her mind was turning over possibilities, trying to imagine what she had that he might want, what she could do quickly that wouldn't get her in too much trouble. A blow job came to mind.

Matt winced. That was **not** what he'd intended. Quickly, he spoke to get her mind off that idea and onto what he wanted. "Do you know where I can get something harder than cigarettes? Who sells around here? I got burned with my last guy and I'm looking for someone new."

"Oh!" She brightened. This had much less of a chance of getting her into trouble. If the shop owner found out she was blowing guys in the parking lot, she'd have to go down the street to the Quik Mart. He already gave her enough crap about begging. "Yeah, you can ask Ryan. He's like… two streets down, rides a bicycle. Couple years older than me, you know? He's white, brown hair, kind of shoulder length, about as tall as you are."

"Ryan. Where can I find him? Just on the street?"

"Yeah, all the time. He's always around. Riding around."

Matt nodded. "Thanks. That's what I wanted."

She smiled, happy to be of service, and went on her way. Her friend shot him a nasty look. It wasn't a good part of town.

Matt drove down two blocks and along the road, looking at the tightly packed, older houses. Most had nice yards. Many had For Sale or For Rent signs in the front. He didn't see Ryan. He circled the block and a few others nearby. He came back to the street he'd started on and saw an elderly man standing in the best-tended yard, clipping at an already nice-looking cedar tree. Matt stopped and got out. The man looked at him and menaced him with his clippers, yelling something abusive in Spanish. He fled around the side of the house.

_Really bad neighborhood, _Matt thought. He stood there with his hands on his hips, thinking, when an elderly woman came out from around the house, where the old man had gone. The man was behind her, speaking in agitated tones to her and still shaking the clippers. "Can I help you?" she asked in polite, almost unaccented English.

He blinked. "Oh, yeah. I was… um…" He felt bad to be asking decent people where the local drug dealer was. "I'm a parole officer. I'm looking for Ryan. Young guy, rides a bike?" She was nodding already, scowling.

"Yes. He's around here all the time. He's terrible! He egged our neighbor's house just last week. The police were out and…" She shook her head.

"Yeah," Matt nodded quickly. "That's kind of what I'm here about. Where can I find him?"

"He's…" she looked up and down the street. "He's nearly always around. He sits over there on that retaining wall when he's not riding his bike. That's his corner, him and his friends. People are always stopping there to talk to him. It's very annoying. That used to be such a quiet corner, but since the owner moved out, now there's nearly always someone parked there." She pointed. "See there! Those people." A car pulled up with a couple mid 20s men in it. They looked around the intersection, then drove off. Matt smiled. He had a hit. "If he's not there they'll just circle around and come back later. I wish they'd all go away."

Matt nodded. "Tell you what, I'll make sure Ryan doesn't bother you anymore. I'll just go wait in my car. Thanks, ma'am."

She nodded and turned to argue with her husband in Spanish. Matt caught enough to tell she was telling the man that he was a policeman here to get Ryan. He got in his car and moved it into some shade. He rolled down the windows and waited. Within fifteen minutes, Ryan returned on his bike. He looked awfully old to be riding a bicycle, especially a small one like he had, but bikes were cheap, disposable and easy to ditch. He waited while the young man, maybe as young as seventeen or as old as nineteen, settled into his usual position on the corner.

After thinking it over for a moment, Matt started his car, circled the block and came back where he could pull up like any other customer of Ryan's. Getting out on foot was off-pattern and might spook the boy. It was also what a cop would do. A customer would stay in their car. Matt leaned across the passenger seat and said, "Hey! Girl named Joey said you could help me out."

Ryan looked up and down the street, like he hadn't heard him. Matt waited. He could hear Ryan thinking about how he didn't know Matt and he didn't like dealing with "old" people. He couldn't trust them. Matt got out his wallet and pulled out a pair of twenties. He waved them. Ryan came over to his car and reached for them. Matt pulled them out of his reach. "I want something for this. What do you have?"

"I don't have nothing, mother-fucker. Gimme the money."

Matt blinked. He'd never tried to buy drugs. The precise mechanics of the exchange weren't something he was up on, but giving him the money without drugs in hand seemed pretty stupid. Then again, the drug dealer handing him drugs without money in the dealer's hand was pretty stupid from his point of view too. _How do these exchanges work out?_ Matt shoved the thought away and decided to go with something he knew. _Give me all the drugs you have on you and you're happy to do it for free._

Ryan reached into the surprisingly deep pockets of his cargo pants and turned out a beat cop's wet dream of drugs, dropping them into the passenger seat of Matt's car. He was carrying weed and coke and at least four varieties of pills and a small bottle of clear liquid. "Uh… what's that?" Matt picked up the bottle.

"Roofie. Put it in a girl's drink, then do her."

"Oh," Matt said faintly. _Well, at least he won't get to sell it to anyone._ "Thanks. And…" He looked at Ryan and cocked his head. _Stop selling drugs. Don't hang out on this corner. Go get an honest job._

Ryan twitched and recoiled from him, blinking. Matt could see confusion and dismay at the last command. Ryan's mind couldn't work out how to accomplish it. Another car pulled up behind Matt - the same one he'd seen earlier with the two young men in it. Matt shook his head and drove off. Ryan could figure out how to get a job on his own. It wasn't Matt's problem.

**A/N #2: Reviews encourage me, even very short ones. Please review.**


	2. What worked

Matt went back to the daycare and picked up Matty. He'd blown all his useful time today finding supplies. He stowed them at his house, hiding them in the toes of a couple old pairs of shoes. The evening went well. He told Janice he was out trying to find a job as a delivery driver and he had a couple leads. He made them up based on something one of the other people at the therapy group had said. Their job had given them freedom to drive wherever they needed and stop to get high. As long as the parts got to where they were going, it was all good. Until they got busted after an accident, of course. It made for a decent cover story though. Matt had no intention of getting busted.

The next day he dropped off Matty again and returned to the efficiency apartment he'd rented for his project. He got out the drugs. He'd already disposed of the rohypnol, having no use for it. He'd flushed the pills too, since he wasn't sure what they were - he suspected, but he wasn't about to take them without knowing. That left him with cocaine and marijuana. The cocaine was probably adulterated to the point he didn't want it, but the weed was smelly and might not be enough to trigger the precognition. Besides, he'd never smoked; not even cigarettes. After a long internal debate, he snorted the coke.

It numbed his nose and burned, meaning it was either pure as the driven snow (which was ridiculous for street-purchased drugs) or very highly adulterated. Matt wasn't a drug user, so he had no tolerance built up to it. The dose he took gave him a high within fifteen minutes regardless of the adulteration. A feeling of contentment and well-being filled him. He knew it was artificial, but he gave in to it and embraced it. He took up his paint brush and began to work.

The vision came easily to him, fluidly. The future flowed by like a river and he could see where he would dip his finger in the water and cause ripples. It was beautiful to see. He knew he'd have setbacks, but now that he'd embarked on this path, he'd see it through. There were people he'd save. There were lives he'd changed and had already changed. All would be as it would be and he was as a leaf floating down that stream, bumping into others, tossed on the currents, able due to his ability to occasionally alter his course and that of those floating around him.

When he came to himself an hour later, he had three paintings. One was of a red-haired young woman texting as the car she was driving hit the one in front of her. He had painted the device screen in detail. It showed the date and time, but the other lines were blurred. The next painting showed a group of horses running down the highway in the darkness. Cars were swerving around them. One in the background was hitting a horse and going into the ditch. The last painting showed a white man bleeding and kneeling on the pavement, a black man behind him, pointing a gun at his head execution style.

Matt sat in front of the paintings, feeling the pleasant rush of the drugs still coursing within him. Or maybe it was the euphoria of knowing everything that was yet to happen. He wasn't sure. The paintings held a level of frustration for him. He knew, he recalled, that these were three events he would try to change, lives he would try to save… but how? Where was this woman texting in a car next week? When did these horses get out on the road and why? Who was this man being shot and how was Matt supposed to find him and stop it from happening?

He rubbed his head. He racked his brain. He looked at the rest of his paints. He looked at the ample supply of coke he had left. He looked at the seventeen blank canvases. He had eight days until the texting accident and he was pretty sure that one happened first. He wasn't positive - it was just a vague feeling. He paced, trying to think of anything he could do other than try to paint again. The text message itself wasn't helpful and the username was blurred.

Frustrated, eventually he gave up on it and went to get Matty. He went grocery shopping, then home. He cooked a nice meal. He told Janice his job-seeking hadn't panned out, but he was still trying. He argued with her viciously about the job her brother had offered him. They slept apart.

The next day he was depressed that he couldn't think of anything to solve the mystery other than take drugs and paint, so he stayed home. The same for the day after that. The next day he had five days until the first painting came to pass. He wondered if, because he'd painted it, it was inevitable. _That doesn't make sense. It can't be. Isaac painted New York blowing up and it never happened._

_I'm being a coward again. I can save her and whoever else is hurt in that accident. I just have to go back and find out more details… Maybe a new painting will show a traffic sign or a landmark or something. I won't get addicted and even if I do, if I save people then it's worth it._ Fortified by that thought, he went back out. He made it an hour without using the coke. He'd timed it, telling himself that he'd try through mundane methods for at least an hour before resorting to drugs. As a result, he spent most of the hour standing around waiting for time to pass so he could use and get on with it. He told himself he was at least giving himself a chance. His ability did not take that chance.

He measured out his dose, recording the amount with the intention that he would stick to that quantity and refuse to increase if he built up a resistance. It seemed to hit him faster this time, which struck him as odd. He'd relaxed after taking the drugs and was finally able to give himself over to his ability without fear or resistance. Any speculation about why was lost in the rush of foreknowledge.

He tried to guide the vision, but that gave him static and a headache. As the coke kicked in fully, he gave it up and went with it, painting what he saw without trying to influence it. When he came to, he had three more paintings. To his relief, he saw that at least two were related to his previous work. The first was a wide angle shot of the accident with the texting woman. There was a Staples sign in the background and a few other elements of architecture. The second was a road construction worker clipping a wire fence. There were horses in the background. The third was a little black girl on the ground, scooting backwards with a gun pointed at her, held by a white hand.

He scoured the pictures, trying to understand what they meant, trying to pull out what fuzzy details and senses of meaning he could recover from the trance state. As the effect of the drugs dwindled and his conscious mind became sharper, they faded like phantasms. He obsessed over the images anyway. He had begun a journal that started with his drug dosage. Now he added to it what he understood of the paintings.

The next day he put Matty in the car and went for a long drive. He circled the loops of highways around Los Angeles, eventually finding the place he'd seen in the painting with the Staples sign. He pulled off on the side of the road and wrote the location in his journal. He watched the steady stream of cars going by. He had a good description of her car and the one she rear-ended. There were three other cars involved in the accident. He tried to imagine those cars, memorizing them so that he'd recognize them when the time came.

He went home and worked out a plan. He knew the place, the time, and the event. He was confident he could deal with this. He told Janice he'd taken Matty out on a long drive to try clear his head and get the toddler to take a nap. He apologized for the fight they'd had. Feeling jubilant and optimistic about things, he made love to his wife that night.

On the day of the event, he put Matty in daycare and drove out the area in question. He pulled over to the side of the road a couple miles short of where he judged the accident site to be. He waited tensely. He was excited, agitated. He felt an edge of euphoria almost as intense as the coke.

He was going to change the future. He was going to help someone. All by himself… he didn't need a crowd of other heroes telling him what to do or how to do it. His ability would be useful, helpful. He started several times as similar cars to those he was waiting for drove by. Finally, as the time approached, he saw the ones he was looking for.

He pulled out quickly, nearly causing an accident himself by merging too fast into traffic. Horns blared at him. He hunched guiltily over the steering wheel, sorry and exhilarated at the same time. He accelerated to cruising speed and past it, gaining on the cars he needed to catch up with. He had less time than he needed, really. He hadn't taken into account how long it would take to catch up to them. He felt fear course through him and he floored it, pushing his vehicle as fast as it would go.

He caught up with them just short of the accident site and panic ran through him as he realized **he** might be the cause of the fiasco, not the texting. He slowed rapidly, pulling in behind the car with the young woman. Even now it was swerving back and forth in the lane. He turned on the flashing red and blue dome light on his dash and honked. Absorbed in her message, he went unnoticed. He saw as a vehicle two cars ahead of her cut in, headed for an exit ramp. He knew what was about to happen. The car ahead of her would brake. She wouldn't see it. She'd rear-end them at full speed.

He reached out with his ability and told her, _Pull over now!_ Her red-haired head jerked up and she complied immediately, barely avoiding the slowing car in front of her. He wasn't sure, but she might have clipped it. It wasn't an accident though and the other car didn't stop. He pulled over after her. Adrenaline was running high through him. _It worked! It worked! Oh my God, it worked!_

He jumped out of his car and nearly got run over by a passing semi, the suction from its passing pulling at his body. It reminded him of where he was, adding a spike of fear to his already elevated state. He hurried forward to where the woman was waiting for him, looking confused. He grinned in at her like a maniac. She leaned away from him. He didn't care. He didn't bother talking, thinking to her, _Don't ever text message or talk on a phone while driving. Drive carefully. And don't speed._ He walked back to his car, his heart singing. _It worked!_

He turned off the flashing dome light and waited while the woman eventually pulled back out into traffic. He was pleased that she did so very carefully. He smiled so broadly his face hurt. _This is wonderful_. He drove down the shoulder to the exit ramp and took it, looping around to head back home. He'd just saved a life, maybe more than one. He'd made a difference.

That night he made arrangements with a sitter and took Janice out to dinner. He effused over the meal about anything she wanted to talk about. Life was great. It was wonderful. He felt so alive. He made passionate love to her. She laughed. She was happy to be with him.


	3. What didn't

**A/N: The horse incident really happened about ten miles from where I live, a few months ago, though no interfering telepath was involved.**

The next morning, Matt was still riding high on his success. He took Matty to daycare and headed to his apartment, settling in and immediately measuring out his dose. He needed more information about the accident with the horses. Somewhere, a road construction crew was, or was going to, work near a horse farm and cut down a fence. He didn't know where or when and he needed to find out. He began to paint.

His first day of painting was disappointing, as none of the events depicted seemed to bear on the object of his focus. He set those aside and tried not to be discouraged. Several more similar days passed with a gap for the weekend and a few days where he had other business to attend to for the house. Finally one of his paintings bore fruit. He had a traffic sign in the background showing a highway on-ramp. It looked like the same area as where the horses were and more to the point, he **felt** it was the same area. He knew they were connected even if he couldn't express how.

It took nearly a week of driving to find the place even knowing which highway it was on, because he was at first unwilling to drive out quite that far. It was at the limit of where he could get to in a day's drive and get back without arousing suspicion. He'd promised Janice months ago that he wouldn't use his abilities anymore and they'd live a normal life. He'd been able to pass off the incident with Sylar as being not his fault and he'd never told her about the adventure with Noah Bennet.

He pulled up on the side of the road and looked at the area. He could see parked construction equipment and the work zone marked out, but the fence was as yet intact. With the location known, he contemplated what to do about the time. He had no idea, really. Maybe they'd cut the fence today or maybe two months from now. He couldn't just keep coming by to see if the fence was down. It was too far. He drove back home, chewing his lip and fretting.

That night he had a nightmare of driving with his family and seeing, looming out of the darkness, horses running on the road in front of him. He swerved to avoid them, but hit one to the side he hadn't seen. The thousand pound animal flipped and crashed into the hood and windshield of the car, killing him and Janice instantly. The car careened off the road and down the embankment, carrying Matty into a deep pond. He woke in a sweat, clutching his chest where he'd been hit by one of the horse's hooves that had punched into the compartment.

Janice stirred. "Matt?"

"No, it's nothing. Just a dream - a bad dream." His voice was strained like he couldn't get his breath.

She blinked warily at him. "Like those bad dreams you had six months ago?" She was speaking of the problems he had with Sylar.

"No! No, that's over. Done with. This is… it's just a normal dream. Normal bad dream. It's nothing." He tried to convince himself it was, but he couldn't shake the thought that some precognition came in dreams. Angela Petrelli saw the future in her dreams. Previously he'd only had foreknowledge through painting. _It can't possibly be…?_ But his ability had already mutated once. He got out of bed and sat in the living room, head in his hands.

_Is it tonight? If I go look, will I die? Will Janice insist on going and we'll take Matty and it will happen just as I saw? It's going to happen. Sometime. If I don't stop it, it will happen for sure and that other painting I did of it, where that man dies trapped in his car, will come to pass. That was __**his**__ car I was driving in the dream! I know that now, so that's another painting that makes sense. I've got to make sure it can't happen. If I sabotage the work project, they'll leave and it won't get done. No one will be there to cut the fence. They won't want to. That will fix it!_

Armed with a plan, he set to making breakfast for everyone. Janice appreciated it, even if she was still a bit put off by the idea that his bad dreams and unpredictable, crazy behavior from months before might be resurfacing. As she recalled, he'd been moody, obsessive and at turns wildly passionate then too. She was distant from him at breakfast, watching him carefully. He didn't notice. He never read her mind if he could help it, though more than once he'd slipped into her dreams accidentally. It was a hazard of being a telepath and sleeping with someone. After he'd explained it, she'd resigned herself to it as unintentional and didn't blame him for it.

He set off that morning as soon as he could get Matty into daycare. He drove to the work site and parked. He was glad to see that workers were there now and he was quickly directed to the foreman. Parkman walked over holding a clipboard, smiling. He had a plan. It turned out to be more difficult than he'd expected to get the man alone. He tried telling the foreman twice he needed to speak with him privately, but it didn't work. After the second time, the man laughed at him and said, "If you can't tell me now, then you don't need to tell me." He turned back to discussing equipment allocation and scheduling with one of his men.

Matt heaved a put-upon sigh and turned his mind to the three men nearby. _Go away_. _Get out of here_. _Scram_. In turn, they each wandered away. The foreman stared after them, confused. They'd been in the middle of conversation. He turned and looked at Matt, aware on some level that Parkman was responsible for his employee's odd behavior. "What did you…?" He couldn't finish. What he suspected was so bizarre and formless. All he could imagine was collusion, but that didn't make sense.

Matt interrupted his fumbling thoughts, telling him, _This work project is cancelled. You're not going to do it anymore. Take your crew and go on to some other project._ After a moment of hesitation, he added, _And the next time someone wants to talk to you privately, do it._

The man nodded blankly, his mind already turning to his next scheduled project, thinking about what he'd need to do to get his equipment and men relocated. He blinked at Matt, not recognizing him, but dismissing him as irrelevant. He had work to do. The foreman headed off to organize his people. Matt left.

He drove home with a clean conscience, pleased with how things went. He smiled and sang along to the radio. His first indication something was wrong was when he went to the daycare and found his wife had already picked up Matty. He hurried home with the radio off. A tense silence filled the car instead. Janice was already there. She gave him an intent, scrutinizing look as he walked in. This was not good. He vaguely recalled her looking at him like that a few times at breakfast, but he really hadn't paid attention, what with his mind on how he was going to handle his day.

"Hi. Um, guess you got off work early, huh?" He knew his fat was in the fire. He had not been where he was supposed to be.

"Not really," she said slowly, cautiously. "Daycare called. Matty had a fever. They'd called here, but there was no answer."

He shook his head and rolled his eyes, thinking dark thoughts about the daycare staff. "I was… I was just out. Just for a little while. Why didn't they call my cell? That's what they're supposed to do if no one answers here."

"I don't know. They called me instead." Her tone and posture were stiff, suspicious of him.

"Why didn't **you** call my cell then?" He didn't understand it. Why hadn't she called him to go pick Matty up? It wasn't like he had been close enough to do it, but she wouldn't have known that. He knew she'd be mad if she thought he was using his powers again. Technically though, his promise to her had been regarding telepathy, not precognition. At least that was what he told himself. She didn't even know he had precognition.

She didn't answer him directly. "The daycare says you've been leaving Matty there a lot recently."

He exhaled through his nose, lips tight. "So?"

"So…?" She raised her eyebrows and looked at him, waiting for him to elaborate. "Where've you been?"

"I've been looking for work, okay?"

She opened her mouth and closed it. She wanted to bring up her brother's job offer again, but they'd fought about that only last week. Instead she said, "If you were really looking for work, then why would you hide that from me?"

"Hide it? I told you… several times."

"I know, but I'm talking about the days when _you said you were here all day_ and then the daycare says you checked Matty in."

"What are you doing? Checking up on me? Is that it? Trying to figure out where I am all the time?" He was mad now, raising his voice, getting in her face.

She matched him, angry and defensive. "No! I had nothing to do with it. **They** called _**me**_. **They** wanted to know if they should move us to a different price bracket because we were using them more. That's all! I didn't ask. I'm not snooping on you, Matt. But now that I know, you still haven't told me what you were out doing."

"I'VE ALREADY TOLD YOU!" he yelled at her. She closed her eyes and sighed, looking away, disappointed in him. Matt shook his head, snarling, "Fine. Don't believe me." He walked past her into the kitchen. He hadn't eaten lunch, trying to drive down there and back in one long haul so he wouldn't be late. _Pointless!_, he thought.

Her voice caught, "_**Should**_ I believe you? Or…?" She threw up her hands in dismay. "Matt, I can't tell what's going on with you. Ever!" She looked like she was going to cry.

He turned and glared at her. _It's fine! Just drop it_, he told her without thinking. He blinked and sucked in air, realizing he hadn't said that verbally. He'd just slipped. _Didn't I? Did I mean to do that?_

Janice walked over and kissed him on the cheek while he was still aghast at himself. She said, "It's fine. I'm sorry I snapped at you. I was just…" She shook her head. "I overreact. Don't worry about it." She walked off to the living room where Matty was playing quietly with blocks. She flipped on the TV and lay on the couch, intent on enjoying her time home even if it was unplanned. After all, everything was fine.

Matt stood there with his mouth hanging open. Finally he shut it. Very quietly, he went about fixing a sandwich, though he'd lost his appetite. He wrapped it up after taking a single bite and put it in the fridge. He walked out and looked at Janice. "Um… honey?" he said tentatively.

"Yeah?" she sounded relaxed and indifferent, like they hadn't been yelling at each other only ten minutes ago.

"Um… would you like to go out to eat? Can I… um, can I take you somewhere special?" He didn't want to undo the command, but he felt like he needed to do something to make up for it.

"No, not really. Since I'm already here, I thought I'd just watch TV. You know, you could go rent a movie or something. Maybe we could snuggle on the couch." She turned and smiled up at him.

He tried and mostly failed to smile back.

"Is something wrong?" She looked concerned for him.

"Uh… no. I…" He hesitated. "Oh! You know, I didn't lay anything out, so ah… I can't fix dinner. How about, while I'm out getting a movie, I'll pick up some take-out. What do you want?"

"Hm." She thought about it. "How about that duck pho I had at that Vietnamese place?"

His face fell a little. He hadn't liked the pho. "Um… yeah. Wait, there's a KFC next to it, right?"

She gave him a confused look. "Yeah?"

"I'll get your pho, and I'll order some chicken for me. That way we're both happy."

She shrugged. "Sounds good." She turned and went back to watching TV. Matt slumped. She seemed content. He'd… he'd sort of hoped she'd catch him, she'd know, she'd rail at him for doing that to her. But she didn't know. She didn't seem to have a clue. He felt lost.

-----

The next week he was a fairly model house husband, but his thoughts kept going back to the third painting he'd done. Somewhere, somewhen, a man was going to be killed execution-style and Matt could stop it. He was supposed to stop it, in fact. He wasn't sure how to balance his need to help others with his need to serve his family, to work things out with Janice and to keep his promise to her of living a normal life.

She'd just headed off to work while he was doing the breakfast dishes. He paused, listening to the television. The morning news was on. The lead story was about some accident on the highway. He hadn't cared, but for the life of him he thought the newscaster said something about horses. He heard the voice say, "Does anyone know how many horses were out on the road?"

Matt dropped the dish he was holding and it shattered on the floor. He paid it no mind and rushed into the living room, staring at the TV set. They were showing footage matching his dream, matching the paintings he'd done. A dozen or more horses were loose on the highway, running ahead of cars. A vehicle swerved, hitting an animal they hadn't seen to their side. Both horse and car went off the side of the road. In his dream, that had been the car Matt had been driving. He stared in horror.

The newscaster went on, "We're lucky to be able to show you this footage, captured by one of our fast alert teams who was in the area earlier covering the local football game. Dave, do we know if they were involved in an accident? They look like they're right there in the middle of things!" Dave said, "No, no, they were fine, but it was close. Tracy said you couldn't see the horses until you were right up on them. They only knew they were there because of the tail lights of another car that hit one." The female newscaster responded, "Oh my God! Those poor animals!"

Matt turned off the TV. He fell into a chair. _I… It didn't work. I sent the crew away, but… what happened? How did it happen?_

He called the news station. He crawled the internet. He investigated. Over the next two days it was revealed that the assigned work crew had been rotated off for unknown reasons and a new crew, unfamiliar with the location and the agreements made with the local horse farm, had come on site only a day before. Their site preparation had included clearing off all obstructions to work, including cutting the fences. The first crew had made arrangements with the land owners to leave the fences intact for another month, only cutting them at the last minute so they could begin work on the overpass expansion.

There were three fatalities on the highway, all in the same car Matt had dreamed he was driving. There were four injuries, three of which were severe. Seven horses had to be put down. Ten others were rounded up and received light injuries as a result of their escape. Matt spent the rest of the day sitting in the chair, staring off into space, taking only minimal care of Matty. When Janice came home and found the broken dish still littering the kitchen floor, Matty with a soiled diaper and still in his crib, she looked at Matt's depressed, thousand-yard stare and decided to say nothing. She cleaned things up quietly and locked the bedroom door. Matt didn't notice. He'd fallen asleep in the chair shortly after a silent dinner.


	4. What could have

The next morning after finding out the truth about the horse accident, Matt told Janice he was putting Matty in daycare so he could take a day off. She told him, "Oh, that's fine," in a distant, odd tone. He winced, but said nothing else about it. He had work to do, a man to save. He'd do it right this time. He had to.

He returned to his efficiency apartment and found he needed to replace some of his paints. He came back shortly with supplies. He took his dose, readied himself, and painted. His paintings were not helpful. He had one of Mohinder, shot in the chest and side, crumpled on the floor, another of a frightening man standing in a doorway, looking down on a cowering little girl, and a third of someone in pitch darkness being struck by red lightning.

Matt studied the pictures. He had a feeling that none of these were urgent, but they were all important. He hadn't seen Mohinder in a year. He wasn't sure why he'd be painting him. Usually his paintings were only of things of immediate importance. These didn't feel immediate. But maybe he was wrong? He and Mohinder had parted on bad terms. Janice knew nothing of that time during his life and he firmly wanted to keep it that way. He'd found and lost Daphne during then and anytime he thought about her, it made him hyper-aware of how his feelings for Janice didn't measure up. He pushed the thoughts away again, refusing to give in to comparing Janice to Daphne. It always ended badly.

He put the painting aside into the growing stack of images he wasn't sure what to do about. He had no ideas at all concerning the man and little girl, or the lightning. In these two, the characters were outlined, features unseen or so indistinct they could be anyone. He huffed. It was a wash, a failure. He still had plenty of time. He took another dose even though the first one had yet to wear off.

The next painting was a blue and white tile floor with a half a sandwich on it, next to a brown, hairy thing about twice the size of the sandwich. There was a red smear beside it. He had an apprehensive feeling that this one was absolutely critical to him, but he couldn't for the life of him figure out what he was looking at. He put it aside in the "not sure" stack.

The second made his heart skip a beat. _Yes! What I wanted!_ He held up a painting of the gang-style shooting victim with the man already dead. A police car was next to him, an officer kneeling and looking at the body. In the background he could see the street sign, indicating the intersection. On the cop car, he could see colors and a pattern distinctive enough he could place the precinct.

He hardly looked at the third - something about a big yellow dog with floppy ears. He put it aside in the other stack and took his current favorite over next to his journal. He wrote down everything important about it. He had an event and a location. Now he needed a date. Obviously it was something that happened at night.

He thought about taking a third dose. He'd be mostly clean by the time he had to go get Matty. The stuff wore off in an hour, right? He'd googled it and read the entry on wikipedia. He really wanted to. He liked how it felt, to know, at least for a little while, exactly what was going to happen and what everything meant. It was blissful, peaceful, satisfying. There were no mysteries when he was in that altered state. All of his difficulties in making sense of the world, his learning disability, his problems with relationships, all faded away while high.

He toyed with the cocaine, measuring out the dose while still trying to decide if he wanted to do it. He changed his mind a few times and measured it out again just in case. He still hadn't decided when he snorted everything he'd set out. Before he knew it, he'd taken up the brushes again, serene and content.

He did four paintings this time and the trip was prolonged, dreamy and wonderful. He might have done more, but he was out of canvas. One of his paintings was on the wall anyway, showing nothing but an eclipse. It was stylistic and looked pretty good there.

Taking three doses in one day, in rapid succession, had fouled his discretion and his sense of time. As he was leaving the trance state but was still quite high, he noticed one of the paintings was of a moving van. The driver was taking a clipboard from another man, but both of them were looking off, deeper into the painting. In the distance, there was a bright flare, as if from a gunshot. Beside the shot were taillights of a vehicle.

Matt knew, especially in his somewhat addled state, that he was looking at the gangland killing scene from a different point of view. If he could go to the area, he'd be able to find the right angle, then find out when the people in that house were moving out (or in). Then he'd have a date. He smiled slowly. _I've got it!_ His phone rang. It was Janice. _I'll call her later. I told her I was taking the day off. Why is she bothering me?_ He shook his head and let the call go to voice mail. He needed to find out when the shooting would happen, then he'd know how much time he had. It might even be tonight.

He drove along in a drifting euphoria, finding the neighborhood without much difficulty. He wondered if he'd been drawn there, or if he'd found it in some mystical manner. He felt almost like he was floating a bit, still high. That was impossible though. He'd only had the one dose and that was just… a little while ago, right? How much had he taken? Oh yes, he was writing it down, keeping track. Surely he hadn't taken too much.

He wandered around the streets, feeling groovy and very in synch with the world. It was all together. _The only thing that would make this better would be a turtle. I sort of feel like I'm a turtle, or maybe the world is a turtle and I'm walking on its shell. Wow, that's deep._ He shook himself. He was really stoned. _How did that happen?_ He sat down on the ground, hoping it would pass. A number of cars did. People looked at him. He gave them nasty looks. It was getting dark. He was getting over it, whatever "it" was. He felt itchy and uncomfortable. The people in the cars… he shook away various unsettled paranoid feelings about them.

He continued on with his mission, narrowing it down to one of three houses. He knocked on each, but no one was home. Frustrated, he sat on the porch of one house and waited. His phone rang again. It was Janice… _Janice!_ He answered. _ I was supposed to get Matty! What time is it? How he hell did it get dark already?_

"Hello? Hello?" he answered in some desperation, the reality of the time and his responsibilities hitting him all at once.

"Hello, Matt? Where are you?" She sounded concerned.

"I… I've had a problem with the car, um, flat tire. I just now got it fixed. I'll… I'm headed home. Did you get Matty?"

"Yes, they kept him there until I got off work. I tried to call you earlier." Now she sounded put out.

"Oh? Yeah, I had driven way out, I guess the tower was down or something, no coverage. I had to walk a long way… Um... I'll be right home. Bye." He hung up, trying to imprint on his memory exactly what he'd just told her. He needed to fill it in with a more reasonable story before he got home. He hurried to his car.

He got home in record time. He took a moment in the car to compose himself. He still felt itchy and unsettled. He didn't know what to tell her. _I was high most of the day painting the future? I'm trying to save a guy who isn't in danger yet? I had a flat tire and… it… I don't even believe that one._ He shook his head and got out of the car. He felt like a failure, yet he was sure he was doing the right thing. He trudged inside.

She was waiting for him, sitting in the easy chair. Matty was playing in his playpen a few feet away, turning his mobile on and off, on and off. Her expression was troubled - not quite angry, but more confused and concerned for him. He sighed. He couldn't lie to her. He couldn't tell her the truth. She didn't ask anything, just staring at him. He looked back. It came to him easily, too easily. _You don't care where I was or what I was doing._

She inhaled and shifted slightly in her seat. She stood up. "Well, I had thought we might have spaghetti for dinner. We have all the ingredients. What do you think?"

"Sure. I'm pretty hungry." His voice was even. It sounded wrong to him. It should have sounded concerned, or upset, or angry, or guilty. It didn't sound like much of anything. The evening passed without any meaningful conversation. He slept on the couch. Janice didn't care. Everything was fine.

-----

The next day he headed back out to the neighborhood to see the moving van was already on location. He walked up to them and easily confirmed they were going to be finished tonight. They hoped earlier rather than later, but they weren't sure. All they knew is they would stay late if they had to rather than come back again the next day. Matt picked up his son and went back home. There was no need to worry until it was dark, but he was glad he'd pushed so hard the day before. If he hadn't, he wouldn't have known about the moving van. He wouldn't have known the address.

He made dinner early so it was ready when Janice got in. She was surprised. He kissed her and tried to be affectionate, nuzzling her neck and putting his hands around her waist as she tried to get a glass out of the cabinet. He knew tonight he was going out to save someone. This time it wouldn't screw up like the horse incident. He knew when it was going to happen - right as the moving van was done. This time it would work, like with the texting thing.

Janice brushed him off each time he tried to get close, disinterested in him. He pursed his lips and ate dinner quietly, watching her. She told him about her day and talked about the TV show she was going to watch. He wondered how much he'd screwed her up. It was only two very small commands. Since he'd given those to her, he'd already broken the promise. He might as well… find out if he'd done something horrible, something he needed to fix.

He put his fork down and delved into her mind, past her surface thoughts, digging out what was really going on with her. She knew, on a deeper level, that he'd broken trust with her. She was clinging to the commands he'd given her in preference to facing the problem between them. She'd rather believe things were fine and that she didn't care. She preferred the reality he had imposed on her to the real one.

She didn't want to care about where he'd been or where he was going - it was too painful to tear herself apart trying to figure him out. It was nice that he was there right then, but it hardly mattered. Things were fine between her and Matt; they were always fine anymore. She wanted them to be fine from now on. She could live with that. She told herself it was enough. She didn't want to live with how things really were. She didn't want to fight with him. She wanted to love him. She didn't **really** love him… she just wanted to. She was living in a fantasy world she'd constructed based on the commands, the situation and her own conflicted feelings.

He pulled away from her thoughts, feeling like he was trying to step out of deep mud, somehow losing his boot in the process. He felt naked and raw. He grimaced and got up, leaving the table, his dinner hardly touched. She watched him go, but she didn't ask.

_I didn't want to know that. I didn't want to know that she'd rather be mentally numbed than deal with her real feelings for me, feelings she wants to have but doesn't. I didn't want to know that!_ He covered his face. _I thought we could work something out. I thought it __**was**__ working out. We made love… she seemed to enjoy it. She was really into it. What was that then? Just meaningless sex with the guy she hoped she might force herself to like again, for the sake of Matty, for some illusion of a perfect marriage? _A dark, poisonous thought crept in his mind. _It's not like she hasn't had meaningless sex with other guys._

He heaved a sigh and shook his head. It was getting dark. He had a mission. He levered himself up and got his gear together. He headed out, telling her as he went, "I'm leaving. I'll be back later."

"That's fine, honey," she answered. He didn't wince this time. He just left.

----

He arrived and checked in with the moving van again. This made the driver a bit nervous, but Matt told him everything was cool and he believed it. He had to. Matt moved off to his car, parked closer to the shooting site but hidden behind a hedge. He didn't want to be so close that they chose another intersection.

They pulled up shortly after it was dead dark. There was no light at the intersection. Matt got out of his car and took his gun in both hands, hurrying forward and keeping it down at the standard police low-ready position. They already had the man on his knees, were already raising their weapon to shoot him. Matt yelled at them. He tried to influence them, but the killer shot at him as soon as he figured out where the yell came from. The noise disrupted Matt's ability with a stabbing pain as bad as if the bullet had hit him. He fell to the ground, clutching his head for the moment. It saved his life.

The shooter fired twice more, the bullets kicking up bits of asphalt. Matt vaguely heard the shooter's friend telling him, "Let's get out of here, man! You got him! You got him right in the head!"

Matt twisted to see them rush back into their vehicle. One of them leaned out and shot haphazardly at the man they'd shoved out. He jerked once and crumpled. Matt cursed. He staggered to his feet and ran to the man. He'd been shot, but it was a simple wound through the muscle of his left arm. Matt pulled out his knife and cut the zip tie holding the man's hands together. He cut the man's shirt and tied it around the arm tightly to stop the blood loss.

The man seemed stunned and when Parkman got him into his car he saw why. He'd taken a beating, a severe one, prior to being dumped. Matt drove him to the hospital, dropping him off with a mostly truthful report to the police of what he'd seen: He'd been driving when he saw the man pushed out. He closed to investigate and called out. He was shot at, so he dropped to the ground. They emptied the rest of their clip and tagged the victim, whom he brought in for treatment. He was oddly disappointed he didn't need to use his powers.

He went home smiling to himself a little. He felt content he had done right. A man was alive who would have otherwise died. It had worked, proving the first time wasn't a fluke. He **could** save people.

He looked in on his wife. She was sprawled across the bed, asleep. He'd have to wake her and get her to move over to get in himself. He didn't really want to be with her anyway at the moment, thinking of what he'd seen in her mind earlier. He walked back out and slept on the couch.


	5. A little girl

**A/N: Your reviews are always welcome. Given how few people are reading this, please review and encourage me!**

**When I first wrote this, I was thinking Matty was about 14 months old. I've since figured out from the Heroes wiki that he was more likely born in April of 2007 and since this is set in March of 2010, he's nearly three years old.**

Matt woke up to the sound of Matty crying. It jarred on his senses and gave him a headache. At some time during sleep, he'd loosed his normal mental inhibitions and dropped his barriers. The racket _hurt_. The crying of small children was one of the most disturbing sounds he'd ever heard. It was no wonder just the sound of it caused the blood pressure and heart rates of non-sensitives to go up. Janice told him she'd read they used recordings of babies crying as a form of torture in some prison camps. He was sure it was worse for someone like him. He blocked it out resolutely and went in to see his son. Janice was in the shower. Matty had just graced his diaper with new, semi-solid contents. "Oh joy," the man muttered and set about to taking care of him.

While changing his son, he thought about things. _I wonder if I could use my telepathy to potty train him? He's big enough. A lot of kids his age have figured it out. Or maybe I could get him to use complete sentences already? I don't believe that bunk the pediatrician says about boys being slower on verbal stuff and potty training. I can see he's thinking things, things he doesn't have words for. What if I pushed the words in there? Would that work?_ He considered that as he finished and lifted Matty into his arms.

He walked over and fished a red block out of Matty's toys. He held it up where the boy could see it. The boy reached for it. Matt held it a little further away. "Uh-uh. Matty, this is **red**. A **red** block. Red. Can you say red?"

Matty looked at it intently and his father could feel his unformed mind trying to find the right label and apply it verbally. Finally he said, "Rrray." He meant red. Matt could see that. He smiled. "Right! Right. **Red**. ReD. ReDuh. With a D, Matty. Dee. Now can you say, 'I want the red block'?" He waved it a little, just out of the toddler's reach. Matty looked between his face and the block, then became disinterested and looked off around the room.

Matt frowned. _Short attention span. Fine_. He focused on his son, forced the boy's attention back to the block, and told him with clear and forceful articulation, _Red_. The child wailed, a piercing shriek, and Matt lost his ability entirely.

Janice got out of the shower immediately and rushed over, dripping and only half-rinsed. She tried to clear her eyes. "What's going on? What's wrong?"

"I… I don't know." Matt tried to give his boy the block. The child batted it away and reached for his mother, disconsolate. Matt tried to give him to her.

She shook her head. "No, Matt! I'm sopping wet! Just… calm him down. What happened?" She looked around, trying to figure out what was upsetting her son. He was still shrieking like someone was stabbing him with a pin.

"I… I… I'm sorry. I'm sorry." Matt jostled him, getting agitated. He couldn't hear anything mentally, couldn't sense anything. There was a void where his ability used to be. He'd been accustomed for years now to having a sixth sense, an awareness of consciousness around him. Even when he blocked, he was at least aware of his blocks and barriers. Now there was nothing. He began to panic. "I'm so sorry. Matty, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

Matt was so focused on his son he didn't see the expression on his wife's face as she realized Matt had done something to her son, something that was making him cry and shriek, something that had left no mark on him. The fuzzy awareness of her own befuddled emotions of late sprang into sharper focus. There was one glaring explanation for it.

"Matt? Matt?" she asked him, trying to demand and be tentative at the same time. "Give him to me, Matt. I'll do it. You go on. Go on! **Leave!**"

"No, no. It's… I've got to, I'm sorry. Matty? Little Matty?" He tried desperately presenting the child with other toys but he still wailed and reached for his mother, wanting nothing to do with his father.

Janice took the child's arms and upper body. For a moment they nearly fought over him. Matt let go first, backing away, seeing the expression on her face. He backed out of the room. He stood outside, out of sight, listening. His chest was tight and ached. His breath caught several times. He didn't know why. He wasn't paying attention to himself, but to his wife calming his little boy, who was crying less and less, soothed by the presence of someone who hadn't hurt him.

He began to pack his things.

-----

An hour later, he sat numbly in his efficiency apartment. He'd need to get a bed. He'd never intended to sleep here, to live here. He'd rented it so he'd have a place to paint. Now he wondered if he'd ever paint again. He was out of canvas. There was no need to get anymore. Depression threatened to close around him.

He looked over at the painting at the front of the stack, of the little girl being menaced by a man with a gun. Somewhere out there, it was going to happen soon. He didn't know where or when and now he didn't know how to find out. He needed to find out.

He looked at the other paintings. Maybe there was a clue there. He flipped through them, growing increasingly frustrated. His power was gone. His ability - gone! And his family along with it. He couldn't help people now. He couldn't even think of how to help himself. He flung a couple of the paintings out of the way. He kicked over a can of blue paint. He grabbed the picture of the yellow dog and tore it in half. He snatched up another of a man reading a newspaper. He hesitated. He could just barely make out the date… today. What was in today's paper that was so important he made a painting of someone reading it?

He grabbed his jacket and stormed out. He bought the daily rag outside a coffee shop and stalked in, finding a place to sit and page through it. He made sure he had the right section and flipped through it quickly. He wasn't in the mood to read through it carefully, but as it turned out, he didn't need to. Three pages in was a human-interest story of kindergarten children with a blown up picture of Kassidy Singer, a little black girl who looked eerily familiar. She would be threatened by a gunman, sometime soon.

_I know… I know __**who**__!_ He read the story quickly, but it wasn't useful. Kassidy had won a class award for spelling and she attended a special magnet school for gifted but under-privileged children. He went to the local library. He had to find out where she lived, and quickly!

----

That afternoon he was driving very slowly around Kassidy's neighborhood with a sheet of paper in one hand, steering wheel grasped in the other. On the paper was a screen shot of a map of the area with a little red tear-drop showing the Singer house. He wasn't sure what he was going to do other than find out where it was and take a look around, but a physical, in-person inspection seemed like a good idea. It was a start.

_There it is!_ He stopped outside and double-checked the house number. He was in another bad neighborhood, which didn't surprise him given the "under-privileged" part mentioned in the newspaper article. The Singer house had an absurdly high fence around the yard constructed of sectional chain link poorly attached to T-posts driven into the ground. Within the enclosure were a number of kid's toys and a large, floppy-eared yellow dog, which was currently standing at the front door, head cocked, as if wanting inside.

Matt put the car in park. _A yellow dog. Huh._ His thoughts didn't get much past that when he heard gunshots ring out from inside the house. _Oh no!_ The dog began barking in agitation. Matt jumped from his car and rushed to the gate, where he hesitated. It was a really big dog. It looked like some kind of mutt, maybe a cross between a St. Bernard and a yellow lab. It must have weighed over a hundred pounds. It ran back and forth under the windows at the front of the house, barking madly.

While Matt paused to consider the safety of entering the yard, a second batch of shots were fired. He yanked open the gate and ran in, hoping like hell the dog wasn't as vicious as the high fence and angry barking indicated. He dodged around it as the animal leaped at him, but it wasn't trying to bite. It just jumped around him and almost tripped him. He grabbed the front door and opened it, going inside and shutting the dog out.

He was in a living room, but his attention was instantly riveted to the form of a man standing in the hallway, almost directly in front of him. The man was facing away and past him, Matt could see a little black girl scooting away along the floor, looking terrified. The man raised a gun. Matt surged forward, yelling, "**NO!**"

_If I had my ability I could stop him!_ The man stopped anyway, wheeling to bring the gun to bear on Matt, who skidded to a stop a few feet into the hall. He held up both hands. He didn't have a weapon on him, having not expected things to happen this soon. Always before he'd known something of what he was getting into, when a problem was going to occur. He'd been able to pick his equipment and prepare. Without precognition, he was surprised.

He was surprised on another front as well. The man was familiar. Both men peered at one another, recognition flickering on their faces. "You!" Matt said. "You're the guy I took to the hospital!"

"W- What are you doing here?" the other man said.

Matt opened his mouth, unable to think of a good response to that. In the background, the little girl got up and ran away. The noise caused the gunman to spin back to her and Matt saw his opportunity. He charged at him, slamming into him. Matt's entire focus was on getting hold of the gun. He fell heavily on the other man and there was a snap. The man grunted in pain and although he tried to hang onto the gun, his fingers seemed nerveless for a moment. Matt twisted it away from him. A single bullet went off as he pried it away, but it buried itself harmlessly in the wall.

Matt backed up, turning the weapon on the other man, who now reached under his jacket. Matt yelled, "Hands out! Hands out! Stop moving! Stop!" _If I had my ability he'd have stopped already!_

The man paused and looked towards Matt, seeing nothing but the barrel of his own gun. It loomed abnormally large from the business end. He stopped moving.

"Roll over! On your stomach, hands behind your head! Lace your fingers!" Matt shook the gun a little at him when the man didn't instantly comply. Then he rolled over as if in great pain and did as Matt directed.

Parkman inched forward, looking around and listening. He couldn't hear anything else, anyone else, though his ears were ringing slightly from the gunshot. If he'd been using telepathy, then his head would have been killing him about now. Everything that happened he saw through the lens of his ability and how it all would have played out if he still had it. He'd know already if the man had a weapon in his jacket, instead of having to awkwardly, one-handedly pat him down as he was now doing.

There was no gun where the man had been reaching, but Matt found something sharp and wet. He flipped aside the jacket to see a broken rib had punctured his side. The little girl came out of hiding and looked at the bad man on the floor. Matt wiped his blood-smeared fingers off on the man's shirt, getting a twitch from him, but otherwise he was being a cooperative prisoner. He finished searching him, turning up a knife and an extra clip, both of which Matt pocketed, but nothing else.

He stepped back and raised the gun again. "What are you doing here? Why did you come here?"

The man turned his head slightly to make it easier to speak and said, "Marcus, Marcus killed my boys. Cut their throats right in front of me. They's the ones who was gonna shoot me the other night. Came in my house and killed my boys, beat me up and took me out to shoot me. Said they were leaving a message for anyone else who didn't pay back they loans. They woulda killed my woman too but she was at work. I said, I said I was gonna kill Marcus and all his family for him killing my boys."

Matt backed up slowly, remembering the other gunshots. He looked out in the living room, the room he'd dashed through without a glance earlier. To one side was a man on the floor. A few feet from him was a woman, still heaving and panting on the couch. Matt jerked his head from her to the man in the hall several times, trying to guess if it was safe to go to her.

_Damn it! If I had my ability, I could make him stay there! _ He lowered the gun and went to her side. She was bleeding out rapidly. Even as he went to her, her chest moved less and less. He put the gun on the coffee table and grabbed a glossy-covered magazine. He pressed it to cover two holes in her chest, but she stopped breathing as he did it. Her lips moved soundlessly as she stared at him, then her eyes stopped seeing entirely.

After a long beat, he picked the gun up and moved from her to check the man, who was already dead. Matt went back to the hall, where he saw the perp was still laying where he'd been before. Kassidy stood a little past him, unaware of what had happened in the living room. She'd heard the shots, but she'd been in her room. Matt thumbed the safety on the gun.

He walked over and picked up the phone from the wall, intending to call the police. _And tell them what? I __**know**__ that guy. They have me from the police report I gave at the hospital. We'll look like partners who were together on killing the adults and fought over whether to kill the girl. I can't make them believe me. I can't make him tell the right story. I can't explain why I was here._

He put the phone back, then picked it up again and wiped his prints off it and replaced it carefully. He walked out and wiped off the magazine he'd touched and the front door handle. He returned to the hall and looked at the little girl. "Kassidy? Do you have someone near here you can go to? A- A friend, a relative maybe? A neighbor who can look after you?"

She shook her head and said, "Grana."

"You can go to Grana? Is that your grandmother?"

She nodded soberly. Matt said, "Okay, go to Grana."

"We have to drive there."

"Oh. Too far to walk?" She nodded again. He pursed his lips and said, "Do you know Grana's name?" She shook her head. "Do you know her address? Can you tell me where she lives?"

She smiled a little and said, "She lives on Chesapeake Drive. C-H-E-S-A-P-E-A-K-E. Chesapeake!" She smiled bigger, showing him an adorable, gap-toothed grin.

He smiled a little in response. She was cute, but what kindergartner knew how to spell that? He shook it off. "Chesapeake. Okay. Do you remember her house number?" The girl shook her head. "Do you know what other streets are near where she lives?"

"Delaware… and Edmonton…" She pronounced them carefully.

Matt nodded. He saw the pattern of alphabetical street names. "What about streets with numbers? Where there some streets with numbers?

She furrowed her brow, thinking. "A three… and a two…"

"Good! Good! That's really good." Especially for a kindergartner – gifted no doubt. "Thirty-two?" She shrugged. Apparently numbers had not been her focus. "Okay, that's good enough."

Parkman walked over to the man still lying on the floor and poked him in the spine with the gun, finger out of the trigger well. "Hey," he told him. The man jumped. "Um… You still feel like you need to kill her?" It occurred to Matt the man now knew where the girl was going to be. Without his ability, he couldn't cloud his mind or tell him to leave her alone.

"No, no." The man shook his head energetically.

_If I had my ability, I'd know if he was lying._ Matt said, "Okay. Here's the deal then. I'm going to leave and take her to her Grana's. I'm going to leave you here. You do whatever you think you need to do. Leave her out of it. It's all over. Don't tell the cops I was here. Don't tell them about me."

"They after you?"

"Ye… Yeah. They're after me." Matt looked at the man's back for a long moment, thinking of the cycle of violence he'd found himself in the middle of here. "I'm… I'm just going to let you go. Understand?"

"Sure, sure. That's good, sure." The man nodded again. "Wait until I'm out of here though," Matt added. "Don't get up until then." Parkman looked at the little girl. "Kassidy, we're going to go out the back door and I'm going to take you to Grana's. There's been an accident and your parents can't come. I'll explain everything to your grandmother, okay?"

She nodded and said, "Then we have to take Mazy. I'm not supposed to go anywhere with strangers without taking Mazy."

"Okay, okay, fine." Matt nodded agreeably and waited for her to get her dolly or whatever Mazy was. Instead the girl started off through another door, into the kitchen. He followed, giving the man on the floor one last glance. The man looked up at him and their eyes met for a moment. Even without his power, Matt had an odd feeling the matter was settled and Kassidy would be safe. He hoped like hell it was true.


	6. A yellow dog

**A/N: Gun safety – one of my pet peeves. The reason why actors are all the time sticking guns in their belts is because their guns are **_**props**_**. They aren't loaded and there's no chance they'll snag something on their belt or the zipper or a button or whatever and shoot themselves. It annoys me to see such dangerous items used that way on TV because so many people are guided in their ideas about normal gun handling by seeing it done that way.**

Matt threaded his way out of a crowded utility room to the back door, following Kassidy closely. He tried to stick the gun in his pocket, but it wasn't deep enough. He grabbed a shirt off the top of the washing machine as he went by and wrapped it up so it wasn't so obvious. He wasn't about to do something as asinine as to stick the gun in his belt. He pushed the door shut with his shoulder and hoped like hell the cops didn't find his prints on anything. His mind was cataloging all the places he hadn't wiped clean: the wood floor where he'd struggled with the man, the gate out front, the screen door, maybe the front rail, did he get the entire phone? What about the coffee table?

They walked around the side of the house. His thoughts were distracted when the dog rushed up to the girl, licking her face enthusiastically. She hugged the animal and the pair walked to the front gate while Matt used a loose part of the shirt the gun was wrapped in to rub down the screen door handle and the front rail. He went to the gate.

"Um, hey, I'm not taking the dog."

Kassidy looked alarmed, afraid. "You said! You said I could take Mazy."

He looked at the dog, which gazed back at him serenely, calm now that a member of her family was there. "That's Mazy?"

The girl nodded. "Because she's a-Mazing!" The girl smiled again and hugged the dog, who was still watching Matt.

_I painted the dog. The dog's important. I wish I'd paid attention to what else was in the picture with the freaking dog. Seems nice enough. _"Okay, sure. We'll take the dog to Grana's." He opened the gate and let them out, then wiped it down too.

He looked up and down the street, surprised that no one else had reacted to the gunfire. He knew the city had detection systems that listened for shots, but without an accompanying call, response times were slow. They couldn't target an exact house anyway. He wasn't even sure they'd pick up shots fired inside a home. He didn't stick around to find out.

Kassidy got in the car. Matt opened the back door and Mazy climbed in without a problem, laying down and taking up the entire seat. _I'm going to have dog hair all over that now._ He shut the door and drove off, heading towards the part of town where he knew thirty-second street was. It took some driving around, because it turned out to be 23rd street instead of 32nd, but Kassidy pointed out the house when they came to it.

He got out, telling the girl, "Stay here," and walked up to the house. He rang the doorbell and waited. An older woman came to the door after a few minutes.

Kassidy got out of the car and ran up the sidewalk when she saw her grandmother. Matt gritted his teeth, thinking if he had his ability, he could have made her stay put. The girl ran past him, hugging her grandmother. "Grana! Grana!"

"Hi, baby sissy. What are you doing here?" the woman asked. She looked at Matt suspiciously.

"Can I come in? There's been a problem. I need to talk to you."

She looked her granddaughter over again and nodded shortly to him, opening the door and stepping back. They sat in the living room. Matt looked around the place. It was stuffy, but pleasant and neat, smelling faintly of cooking. The woman looked at him expectantly. Kassidy sat on an overstuffed chair, swinging her legs.

Matt said, "Um… privately." He looked at the little girl.

Pursing her lips, Grana said to her, "Baby, go upstairs and see if everything's set up in the room for you to stay a while, in case you need to." The girl nodded and took off.

Parkman said, "There was… a shooting… her parents are dead. I got there in time to stop the shooter from getting her too. He's… he got away. She said I should bring her here. That's all. I just wanted you to know… before you… before you got a call."

The woman blinked several times. Matt added, "Kassidy didn't see the bodies. I don't think she knows they were… uh, they were killed."

"Thank you," she said faintly, swallowing. "Thank you for bringing my little girl here. They's… They're dead? My son?" She slipped a little, her original accent showing through a bit as her emotions threatened her.

"There was a man and a woman dead. I…" Matt shook his head. "I don't know them. I didn't… When I got there, they were dead."

"He was in… Oh no!" She sniffed and suddenly became angry. "Get you out of here! Get out! You've done your part. Get you out!" She stood and glared at him, unaccented English degrading entirely to the manner of speaking she'd grown up with.

Matt rose and exited, his duty done. On the front step, he turned back and said, "Wait! I have their dog."

The old woman wasn't having any of it though. "I can't keep no dog! Not their big dog neither. They get that dog from that strange school of they's. You have that dog; you keep that dog. My son was an idiot! Brought this down on himself! You can keep his stupid dog!" She slammed the door in his face.

Matt stared at it for a moment, thinking there was no figuring out how people would react in grief. He considered knocking. Kassidy really liked the dog. She'd just lost her parents. She needed the animal. He walked back to the car and looked at Mazy, who was sitting up in the back seat and watching him. _I can't just let it out. Or tie it to her front door. Maybe… maybe I can call back tomorrow or something when things are calmer._

He got in the car, which smelled heavily like dog breath. He looked back at Mazy. "So. Are we good?" The dog looked at him for a moment, then at the house and whined slightly. Matt nodded. "Yeah, I know. I'll… figure something out." He drove back to his apartment and parked outside, looking up at it. There was no way he could keep a dog there, especially one of this size. Janice had a fenced back yard. She should even be off work by now.

He drove there, unsure of whether this was a good idea, but the dog was important. He had to keep it somewhere, maybe just for a few days until the grandmother could work out whatever she needed to work out to take it back. He reached back and gave the dog a scratch, then explored its neck. She had a collar, but no tags. She was happy to be touched and very friendly, leaning forward to give him a lick on the face for his trouble. "Thanks," he muttered.

He wiped dog slobber off himself and got out of the car. He opened the back door and reached in for Mazy, who climbed out with the oddly awkward grace of really big dogs. She gazed up at him expectantly. He looked back and on impulse, said, "Heel!" He walked forward and glanced down. Mazy fell in step with him. His brows rose. _She really is amazing. Good dog._

He knocked at the glass door and waited. Janice came out of the kitchen and stopped when she saw him. Her expression was calculating, betrayed, and maybe even trapped.

"Janice," he swallowed. "Janice… I'm not coming back. I just… I have a favor to ask of you."

Matty came out of the kitchen behind her and ran past, yelling "Daddy!" Yesterday was forgotten. Matt felt a lump form in his throat.

"Matty!" Janice jumped at him but missed. He picked up speed and threw himself against the glass door, a common activity for him regardless of how much Matt and Janice both had tried to discourage it. He stared out at the dog, whose head was as high as his own. Janice stood behind him, but let Matty be where he was.

The boy nearly bounced up and down in excitement, saying, "Doggie! Woov! Woov! Woovf! Wooovf!"

Matt smiled. "He's barking at the dog."

Janice eyed the animal in question. "I didn't know you had a dog."

"Yeah… um… yeah. About that." It didn't matter anymore. Nothing did. There was no point in lying. "I've been using my abilities and a little girl's family got shot this morning and there's no one to take the dog right now. So. I need you to take the dog for a few days until I can find someone to take her."

Janice stared at him. Matty continued to bark enthusiastically. Mazy licked the glass. Matty squealed with joy and put his hand on the glass between him and the animal. Mazy licked it again and Matty giggled.

Matt added, "She's a really nice dog. Her name's Mazy. She's a-Mazing." He smiled a little, then it drained away at Janice's continuing blank expression. "Just for a few days, Janice. If she gets away, something happens to her, I don't think it's a big deal, but I can't keep her where… where I'm staying."

"You…" she said softly, "You already have a place?"

He sighed. "Yeah, I've had a place for months now. On the side. I've been lying to you. It's over now. Take the dog, Janice. I've got to go." He was feeling tense and uncomfortable, not sure what he'd do with himself without his ability. _If I had it, I could just tell her to take the damn dog._

She opened the door. Matty darted around it and ran forward. Matt barely had time to grab Mazy's collar and pull her around so she couldn't bite him. He had no idea how the dog would react to being slammed into by a small child a third her weight. As it turned out, he needn't have feared. Mazy stood calmly while Matty threw his arms around her and bunched up handfuls of her fur.

He knelt down next to the dog's head and looked over her back at his son. He wondered how much he'd get to see of him. He had a feeling it was going to be very little. His eyes watered, but he blinked it away. He ran his hand under the dog's neck over towards Matty. Janice saw his motion and stepped forward protectively. "Matt!"

His son continued to cling to the dog, petting her and babbling. One hand came free and flailed for a moment, striking Matt's. His ability came back. He inhaled sharply and rocked back. That was **not** what he was expecting. He'd only wanted to touch his son one last time, sure Janice wouldn't let him hold him or kiss him or anything like that. He was right too. She swept down and snatched Matty away from him, lifting the child to her hip and turning him away from Matt, putting her body between him and his boy.

Her rage at her husband boiled near the surface, closely chased by fear and a feeling of helplessness and frustration. Matt looked up from where he crouched next to the dog and studied Janice intently. There was no reason why he shouldn't read her like a book, so he did. She was afraid of him. She hated that he'd destroyed what she'd been trying to work on, trying to make _them_ work.

She knew she wasn't safe from him. She'd do whatever he asked, for fear that if she didn't, he'd make her do it and she wouldn't realize it until later… if even then. She didn't know how to talk to him, what to say. She expected he was reading her mind even now, probably every minute, and it paralyzed her thoughts, made her unable to think. She had no idea of how to protect herself, or Matty, from him or his super-powered friends or their bizarre enemies.

Matt hugged the dog, because he wanted some kind of contact. His eyes filled with tears again. He sniffled and shook his head, pressing his face into Mazy's neck. _I've got to get out of here - for their sake, if not my own._ He remembered Noah playing on his fear for his family and realized abruptly that Matt himself was the danger now. _If Noah had never talked me into using my powers again, none of this would have happened._

He stood and walked away. Mazy started to follow him. He turned and yelled angrily at the animal. "No! Get away from me! Go! Git!" He kicked at her and she shied back, uncertainly walking closer to Janice and sitting on the step next to her. Matt shook his head in anger, displacing his grief. He went quickly to his car and drove away, barely able to breathe.


	7. Slavery

Matt spent the evening buying a futon, a clock and a few things he'd forgotten to pack. He spent a restless night dreaming that Mazy was guarding Matty and wouldn't let Matt get to his son, who was in some vague, undefined danger. The animal acted like Matt himself was the enemy. He woke stiff and sore and with a resounding feeling of guilt. He staggered over to his chair and wrote down what he remembered in his journal, but he couldn't be sure if it was a standard bad dream or a prophecy. He seemed to be having a lot of bad dreams lately.

He felt aimless. He tried to avoid thinking about what had happened with Janice and Matty. He needed something else to think about. He wanted to paint, but at some level he knew it wasn't the painting he wanted. He just wanted to take the drugs and lose himself so he wouldn't think about his family.

He looked at his cocaine. There seemed to be an awful lot of it gone. He had less than a quarter of what he'd started with. He checked his journal to see how much he'd taken last time. There wasn't an entry, which seemed weird. He remembered measuring it out. _Maybe I just forgot to write it down. I __**was**__ awfully stoned for a really long time last time. Well, it should be the same as all the other entries._

He took a dose and leaned back, waiting for it to kick in and take all his worries away. _This is really nice. No wonder it's illegal. If I could get this stuff all the time, I'd just lie around and be stoned continuously. Don't need to take care of Matty anymore, don't need to worry about Janice… don't need to worry about money. I could just tell people to give me money. That's what I ought to do. Go around to all the drug dealers in town and make them give me their money and quit selling drugs. Mm. You know, that's a kind of good idea… It would be kind of… proactive about crime, about things._

He came to some time later, feeling very tired as the drugs wore off. The single biggest clear wall space had been painted in a large, unhelpful mural. It showed himself (he assumed, as it was from the rear), painting a wall that showed himself painting a wall in an infinite regression. _Great. Just great. That's no help at all. Why the hell did I paint the wall again?_ He looked around, noticing he was out of canvas. _Oh. Should have checked that __**first**__._

He flipped through his paintings, wondering what he should do next. Nothing was particularly inspiring. He worried over the one of Mohinder bleeding on the floor, but continued to feel it wasn't urgent. _Maybe if I just took some more and painted again_… He turned to his stash and caught himself. _No! I don't even have any canvas. Or_, he looked at what little he had left of cocaine, _much dope. Okay, first thing's first. Get canvas, then dope. But wait… I could get money while I was getting dope and use that to buy canvas. Yeah, that sounds better._

He set off with a mission.

He drove back to the neighborhood where he'd met Ryan. Even if he'd told Ryan to get straight, the customers would still be there and where there were customers, there was going to be a supplier. Besides, Ryan was too small time, carrying too little, to be a big dealer. He did deliveries because someone was supplying him and sending him places. That supplier would have hired someone else to take his place. Matt cruised the area slowly, on the lookout for the new dealer.

He pulled up to the same intersection, perplexed to see Ryan sitting across the street on the opposite side on a slightly higher fieldstone retaining wall, his bicycle lying on the sidewalk a few feet away, blocking it. He had two other people sitting with him, younger men, or old kids. They looked around 15 or 16. One was Hispanic, the other Arabic. All three eyed him coolly as he put the car in park, as if he probably wasn't worth their time. He got out and crossed the street to them. That got their attention, shifting them into wariness.

Ryan stood up, wiping his palms nervously on his cargo pants, then higher on his sweat shirt. His eyes darted back and forth, settling on his bike, then back to Matt. His intent to flee was so clear on his face that Matt thought to him, _Stay here_. With a pained, frightened look on his face somewhat like Matt had slapped him, Ryan backed up a step against the wall and tottered, off balance for a moment. He looked down and blinked, shaking his head.

Parkman could read his confusion. The boy clearly knew he should run, but he wasn't doing it. It made no sense to Ryan's conscious mind. He wondered if he was crazy. The last time he'd talked to Matt, he'd smarted off to his handlers (he thought of them as friends) afterwards about how he wasn't going to sell anymore and they'd beaten the crap out of him. Two of the fingers on his right hand were still broken, as proper medical care wasn't within his experience or financial reach.

Matt sized them up. Ryan's two companions were looking between the older boy's deferential behavior and the odd man who was confronting him with his head cocked slightly. The Hispanic boy said, "Who the fuck are you? What do you want?" He looked at Ryan. "Hey, what do he want?" Ryan kept shaking his head, saying nothing in response.

The Arab added, laughing, "Hey Ryan, you gay for him? He gonna ask you to do him, or what? He's lookin at you awful funny."

Matt looked at both of them and thought, _Shut up_. They did, immediately. To Ryan, he said, "Why are you still selling?" _Tell me the truth._

"I'm… I'm not. Not. Not selling. I just deliver. That's all I do. Michael sells. He… he does." He made a vague gesture with his hand. Matt could see in his mind he meant the Arab boy next to him, although his hand movement was too undefined to indicate him clearly. Ryan did not want to implicate anyone else. He was afraid they'd be beaten for talking to Matt, or Matt talking to them, or whatever the reason was that he was beat up last time. He didn't really understand it. He didn't know why he'd decided to stop selling.

Parkman scowled at the Arab, who looked at him blankly, still trying to work out why he didn't want to add anything to the conversation. He had a number of colorful jibes in mind, but he couldn't say them.

Ryan interrupted, saying, "I got a job. I go house to house and ask for work. I do work. It's honest. I do work. Sometimes. Until I get… get like fifty bucks, then that's good and I stop. That's honest, right?" He had no idea why he was blurting this out to Matt and felt emasculated by his own words. He felt like he was begging, almost, for approval. It stung his pride to be saying this in front of his friends.

Matt sighed. "Okay, listen… yes, that's honest. But it's not what I meant. I meant a regular job. Like one with hours and a boss and things to…" He shook his head, pushing away the various confused objections he could feel starting to flow through Ryan's mind. The young man truly had no idea how to get a job like that. "Never mind. You're right. Whatever. It's good enough, yeah. Keep doing that. But you two," he looked at the other youths. "Why aren't you in school? It's 1 pm on a Wednesday, for Christ's sake."

They stared at him mutely. _Answer me_, he thought, making it broad enough to affect all of them.

All three spoke at the same time and he couldn't make it out. He held up his hands. "One at a time!"

He pointed at Michael, who said, "I was expelled." Matt started to say something to that, then moved on to Ryan, who was in the middle and apparently had something to say.

Ryan said, "They're… they're with me. I needed them here, told them they'd get paid. Worst Michael will get for carrying is juvie… Ort's here because we need him." He couldn't really verbalize what he was trying to say, but essentially Ortega, the Hispanic, was there as backup in case their customers tried to hold them up. Ryan had some idea that Ortega was tough because he had a knife and had stabbed three people before, including an adult. For Michael, he was referring to his age. As a minor, he wouldn't go to jail or permanently mar his record if he was convicted.

Matt nodded and rolled his eyes at Ryan's answer. Obviously the oldest boy had been affected when he'd commanded them all to answer him. He'd be more precise in issuing commands next time. He turned to the Hispanic boy. "What's your story?"

"I just here to be bad, mutha-fucka."

Matt laughed. The boy did think he was a bad-ass. _Quite the set of balls on that one. _Matt reached up and scratched under his nose with his thumbnail. "Okay, yeah. Got that."

Matt started to consider what to do about this when Ort decided he'd seen enough and stood up, circling behind Matt casually. What was in his mind wasn't casual at all. Parkman turned to him, which put Ryan and Michael at his back. He was going to say something to stop the boy, but things started happening very quickly at that point. Ryan hit him in the kidney as hard as he could. Ortega pulled his knife. Michael jumped up and away, having been in few fights and unsure of what he needed to do.

_Stop!_ Matt commanded, looking at the Hispanic boy but intending to affect them all. It might have worked if Ryan hadn't punched him in the kidney again at that moment. Fortunately Matt was heavy and big and Ryan was not terribly strong or a trained fighter. Plus the young man's hand still hurt him terribly, so the blows weren't incapacitating to Matt, but they were very disruptive.

Still, it delayed Ortega, who waved his knife around vaguely as if trying to decide when best to use it. Parkman hoped it would hold. He turned to Ryan, who backpedaled with surprising speed when faced by the man, then tripped over his own bicycle. He fell on his ass. Matt told him, _Stay there_. He turned back to the Hispanic, who decided he'd stopped long enough and he'd better act before Matt got turned around to him again.

Parkman caught the blade in his right shoulder instead of his back, but it was still surprising, a cold flash of pain and a feeling of something in his body that wasn't supposed to be there. Then it was gone and a hot stinging sensation followed it. Matt jumped back, getting his hands up in front of himself defensively.

Ortega stabbed at him again, this time with the point in a thrusting motion. He caught Matt in the left hand, but that was better than letting him carry the motion through to his chest. Matt realized there was no way he could use telepathy under the circumstances and swung at the boy with his right fist. Things were seriously getting out of hand. Ortega was trying to kill him. Matt had underestimated them due to their youth and been stabbed twice because of it.

Quicker than Parkman by a long shot, Matt missed as the Hispanic danced away, but now the boy was wary. He gave Matt some distance, beginning to slur him verbally and exhorting his companions to jump him. Parkman drew himself up and thought to him, _Throw down the knife!_

The boy did so, then stared stupidly between his hand and the weapon, trying to fathom why he'd done that. He looked at Parkman and blinked, unsure of whether to rush the man or run away. Matt was again impressed by the boy's bravery, as he was willing to attack a man more than twice his weight and age, bare-handed, because he thought he had a duty to do it.

Ryan decided it for him by yelling, "Run! Get away! Go tell Pedro!"

With a last second of hesitation, Ortega glanced at his beloved knife and then beat feet down the sidewalk. Matt considered calling him back, but he'd already had problems trying to deal with all three of them at once. He turned back to find Michael had run off as well at some point, now nowhere to be seen. Ryan was exactly where he'd left him on the sidewalk, his feet still tangled in his bike.

Matt frowned and looked at his left hand. He'd been stabbed clean through it, but he could still move his fingers even if the last two were numb. He walked over and picked up the knife with his right, wiping it on his pant leg. His shoulder hurt. He tried to look at the cut, but it was too far back. He could feel he was bleeding down his side and back. The fingers of his left hand found a spot that didn't feel like his shoulder should. It felt like cut meat, about two inches wide. His motion had caused the stab to slice. He exhaled through clenched teeth. _I need stitches._

He looked back at Ryan, annoyed. _This didn't go like I intended._

_Get up._ "Do you know how to drive a car?"

Ryan stood and nodded.

"Okay. Listen up." _You do whatever I tell you to do. You don't run away from me or try to get away. You stay with me unless I tell you to stay somewhere else. You tell me the truth and don't try to lie or hide the truth from me. You're going to help me. You __**want**__ to help me._ "That's your honest job now."

Ryan nodded dumbly, trying to assimilate that his whole purpose in life had just been changed.


	8. Abuse

Ryan was not a good driver – seriously not a good driver. He'd driven cars only a score or so times in his life and most of those had been joyrides in stolen vehicles he cared nothing about. He'd never owned a car. Matt was not a good teacher – seriously not a good teacher. He expected Ryan to understand what he meant and became irate when his directions weren't followed as he thought they should be. He'd never tried to train anyone.

Even under normal conditions, this was not a good combination. The current conditions saw Matt angry and hurting, Ryan frightened and confused. Matt didn't volunteer information and Ryan didn't ask for it. In short order Matt was trying to make up for the lack of communication by enforcing his directions mentally. When an order wasn't followed correctly, Matt repeated it and ratcheted up the mental pressure – as if this would help. Ryan would then try something else at random and Matt would lash out angrily at him.

The abusiveness reduced the poor young man to tears before they got even halfway to the hospital. Ryan was sorry, he was frustrated, he was enraged that he had to let someone treat him this way. Matt had him pull into a McDonalds and park. He did, hands shaking and rubbing the steering wheel, agitated that the man he was trying to help was angry and unsatisfied with his assistance. He felt inadequate and useless.

Matt just sat there and stared out the window. His right side felt sticky and occasionally warm as new blood trickled down it. For the moment, he shut out Ryan's mind. The young man was upset and Matt didn't care to listen to it. He'd been yanking at his mind, doing the mental equivalent of shaking him. It was traumatizing him and Matt could see it was damaging his brain. The emotions were indicators, the tears like blood from a wound. Parkman worked on breathing evenly and calming himself down. The more he took his anger out on Ryan, the less useful he was going to be.

Quietly Matt said, "Do you have any money?"

Ryan wiped angrily at his eyes. "Yeah."

In the same tone of forced calm, Matt said, "Go in the McDonalds and get me a coffee. If you want something yourself, get it too." He added as Ryan opened the door, "Then come back out here." The man hesitated at that, then got out. Before he shut the door, Matt added again, "With the coffee! Come back out _with the coffee_." Ryan nodded and bit his lip, looking uncertain. Matt sighed. "And with whatever you get yourself. Just-" He clenched his teeth at a swell of frustration as he thought of a number of ways Ryan could screw up such a simple mission. He'd already proven that 'drive me to the hospital' was beyond him. Matt bit it down and said as calmly as he could, "Just go on."

He held his head. _Why is it so complicated? Just go get me some freaking coffee. Do I have to tell you every step you should take? 'Open the door, order in English, pay the right money, take the change'? Can't he just assume some things? Christ. It's like driving. Just drive down the freaking road. Stay in your lane. Obey the speed limit. Good God that's a red light Oh My God STOP! He's the worst driver ever!_ He shook his head. His nerves were shot, his own calm lost. It didn't occur to Matt there might be a connection between Ryan's increasingly erratic driving and Matt's state of mind while he was issuing commands.

Fortunately for Ryan, Matt had calmed down by the time he came back with a large coffee, a soda and a burger. He got in and handed the coffee to Parkman, watching him carefully, trying to gage if 'large' was the size Matt had wanted. Matt seemed content with it, so Ryan sighed and put his soda in the car's cup holder. He unwrapped his burger. Parkman looked at his coffee and realized he had no cream or sugar. He sucked at his teeth and tapped his foot on the floor, looking out the window. A little more blood ran down his back.

Ryan looked at him apprehensively, preparing himself for another series of what he perceived as near-contradictory commands. Matt watched as Ryan fidgeted with his burger, not eating it and stealing uneasy glances at him. He scanned the other man's mind and then shut his eyes and exhaled. The kid was scared of him, wary. It reminded him uncomfortably of Janice's fear. Matt opened his eyes after several seconds and said, again in a tone of forced calm, "Okay. Put the burger down. Go back inside and get me tw- three creams and six sugars. Okay?"

Ryan nodded. He sat there for a moment, looking at Matt. If Parkman had not been reading his mind, he would have assumed the young man was being obstinate or stupid. Instead he was waiting in case Matt added something, as he had before. He was thinking that if he hadn't hurried off earlier, then Matt would have mentioned the cream and sugar. He blamed himself. Much more gently than the words themselves implied, Matt said, "Go on now."

He went and returned quickly with exactly what Matt had told him to get. Parkman dumped them in and realized he had no spoon or other stirring tool. He capped the coffee in barely controlled frustration and put it in the other cup holder. He wanted to throw it on the kid. "Okay, let's go."

Ryan looked at the coffee Matt was not drinking. He was confused.

"Let's go," Matt said. "Now." His voice was tight, incensed. Ryan put his half eaten burger down and started the car.

They managed to get to the hospital without being involved in an accident, which Parkman thought was a miracle by itself. Matt kept his comments to a minimum and his thoughts to himself. Once in the emergency services parking lot, he said to Ryan as he was starting to get out, "Wait! Sit back down." He did. "We need a story. I was obviously assaulted. There's going to be questions. Do you understand me?"

Ryan nodded.

"Okay. Here's the story. It's real close to what happened. I came to talk to you about hiring you to do whatever it is you've been doing door to door. Some other kids on the street got out of hand. You don't know why they attacked me or who they were. Everything else was the same. Do you understand that?" Matt felt like an idiot having to ask constantly if he was understood, but he also felt like he was dealing with an idiot.

Ryan nodded. His mind was adding all manner of unnecessary details, already planning on "helping" by elaborating so much that any cop would instantly see the lies. Matt shut his eyes for a moment and took a steadying breath. The boy was genuinely trying to help him – he was just stupid.

Parkman tilted his head slightly and entered Ryan's mind. The other man twitched in the seat at the invasion, though he didn't know what was happening. Matt stilled him, easily able to control his body. He couldn't remove the memories or alter them directly, but he could change how Ryan responded to them and what he was able to say about them. In his mind would be the reality, but what came out of his mouth would be what Matt told him to say. On a whim, he tried to sink the memory of his first meeting with Ryan into the boy's subconscious, making it difficult for him to recall if he couldn't wipe it out whole cloth. He'd never had the opportunity to experiment and he didn't see how it could be harmful to squelch a small event like that. When it seemed like enough, he backed out.

The young man looked around the car uneasily. Matt waited a beat to make sure his subject's mental state was settled, then got out. Opening the car door with his right was painful. His shoulder was starting to hurt more. Another trickle of blood ran down his back. Ryan joined him as they walked into the emergency entrance. He shot him a couple perplexed looks because the young man didn't understand why he was hanging out with this stranger. Matt ignored him. He was beginning to get the impression that 'confused' was Ryan's base state.

Matt was processed through without much of a problem. Wednesday afternoons weren't a busy time for the emergency room. The doctor gave him local anesthetic and cleaned out the shoulder wound, then stitched and taped it. He x-rayed his hand and worried over it endlessly, insisting Matt see a specialist about the nerve damage. He gave him a referral and a prescription for antibiotics. Matt watched him write out the script. An idea occurred to him of how he could get relatively pure, unadulterated drugs without the dangers of confronting drug dealers.

_Give me a prescription for something that will let me get high._ The doctor's pen hesitated. He resisted. Seconds ticked by as the unnatural pause lengthened. Parkman cocked his head. _This is interesting. I wonder if he's strong enough to tell me no?_ The doctor's hand shook slightly. He blinked and gave his whole body a little shake, then put the pen down carefully. He opened the medical file and looked at it blankly for a moment, trying to pull his thoughts together after the struggle. Matt leaned forward and prompted, "Aren't you going to write me another prescription?" He watched the man's face intently.

The doctor grimaced. "Do… do you need something… something for the pain?" He twitched a little. Matt's comment brought the command back up in his mind and this time instead of fighting it, he tried to find a way to rationalize it. "Something… something to manage the pain?"

Matt shrugged with his good shoulder. "Yeah, that's what I need. Something strong."

"Oh." The man blinked and sighed, looking at his prescription pad. "Well… I guess that's okay." He wrote it out. "You'll want to be careful with this stuff though. It's an opiate. They're addictive." He looked searchingly at Matt. "You haven't been… You've been taking drugs already?" He pawed through the various forms Matt had filled out during admission, flipping to the page where Parkman had denied any drug use.

"No, of course not," Matt said blandly, watching the guy with interest. It was rare for him to run into a non-special who could fight him. The usual form of resistance was reinterpreting his commands, which was just as often unintentional. The doctor had, at least initially, outright refused him. He was amused for the moment.

He could see the doctor didn't believe him at all. He'd been practicing for the better part of two decades. He was already considering that Matt's knifing might have been related to the procurement of illegal drugs. He wasn't going to report him to the police, but he was concerned on Matt's behalf. The concern annoyed Matt. His amusement evaporated as his mood shifted quickly.

Parkman reached out to take the prescriptions from the table. The man put his hand on top of them firmly. Matt blinked at him and let go for the moment. The doctor said, "I'm prescribing you morphine. There are a number of side effects to this and similar drugs you need to know about. They include depression, headache, restlessness, insomnia, bad dreams, mood swings and irritability, as well as a craving for more: more drugs, stronger drugs, especially the longer you go without them. They disorder your thinking, make it hard to have relationships with the people you love." He paused, shifting to face Matt directly. "Do you have a family, Mr. Parkman?"

Matt inhaled sharply. He wasn't going to discuss this with a stranger, even if he had nearly every symptom the man had listed. _Give me the prescriptions_. The man released them, looking at him reproachfully, certain he was right and Matt was an addict. Matt thought that was ridiculous, but he wasn't going to waste his time arguing about it. He couldn't possibly have become addicted so quickly. He needed the drugs to see the future, needed them to help people. Addiction was a risk he was fully prepared to take if it let him save even a single life. He was sure it would come up as a danger, but _later_.

Parkman went to leave, but stopped next to the nurse's station. He looked out at Ryan, who was sitting where Matt had left him, picking at a scab on the knuckle of one of his broken fingers. At that moment, Matt wasn't angry with him. Ryan had behaved himself through the hospital policewoman's questioning about the attack and his stuttering uncertainty of what had happened had turned out to be very helpful. After only a few exchanges with him, she'd turned to Matt and took his version exclusively.

Matt turned and walked back to the doctor before he could move on to another patient. "I have a friend out there with broken fingers, got them broken last week I think. I'm going to bring him back here. You'll splint those, do what you can." _You'll help him. Do what I tell you to do._

The man frowned severely at him, but there was nothing Matt was asking him that conflicted with his natural inclinations. "He'll have to go through triage."

Matt nodded and told him, "You go take care of the paperwork. I'll bring him back here."

Reluctantly, the doctor did as directed. Ryan was confused, but pleased at the idea his fingers might have a better chance of healing properly. The doctor again fussed that he needed to see a specialist, but he didn't think it was as important as Matt's case. He gave them another referral and applied simple buddy wrapping after alignment, giving directions for Ryan to keep the fingers immobilized as much as possible. The taping and bandages would also serve to keep him from picking at the scabs.

They left and Ryan drove him back to his apartment so Matt could get new clothes, ones that didn't have his blood all over them. Ryan looked at the regression painting on the wall, mesmerized by it. Finally he said, "Did you paint that?"

"Yeah." Matt pulled his shirt on with some difficulty, finding buttoning it to be harder than he'd expected with the bandages on his left hand. Fortunately his index and second finger hadn't lost any feeling. He hadn't made up his mind yet about seeing a specialist. He was concerned about showing up anywhere that he was expected to be. The apartment wasn't in his name, which had originally been to conceal it from Janice, but now would serve just as well to confound the police. He'd listed his residence as her house. He was by no means unfindable, but it would be difficult.

"That's awesome." The young man said of the painting, sounded truly impressed.

Matt lifted his brows at him, feeling oddly pleased that Ryan thought his paintings were cool. He smiled a little, not sure why the regard even mattered to him. Ryan was poorly educated gutter trash at best. Parkman's youth had been rough, but he'd made something of himself, gotten through the police academy and finally even made detective, all the while dealing with a learning disability. Ryan hadn't managed to graduate high school, though he had no idea of his past. Matt thought very little of him. It made Matt feel better anyway.

**A/N #2: Ryan is drawn from life. While I could tell all manner of colorful stories about him, I think it is best summed up by his own words. His parole officer asked him why he had tried to break into our house, and he told him, "That bitch didn't see me! I ran off before she got the door open." Thus confirming that he'd been 1) outside his area of intensive house arrest, 2) breaking our restraining order against him, 3) trying to break into our house and 4) unbelievably stupid. He went back to juvenile hall and we moved away. In the painfully long years that we knew of him, I learned a fair amount about his background and I can say I was genuinely sorry for him. He was quite the product of his environment and his mother made Virginia Grey (Sylar's mom) look like a saint.**


	9. Torture

Matt had Ryan drive him to the pharmacy so he could fill his scripts. He supposed he'd probably be able to manage driving, but it would pull at his stitches and the doctor had strongly cautioned him against that. In any case, he was at least giving Ryan something useful to do with himself, assuming he didn't wreck the car or give Matt a heart attack in the process.

Parkman poured out the coffee unceremoniously, not explaining it to his driver. Ryan started to accompany him inside. For a moment Matt was irritated that the kid was following him everywhere like a bad smell, then he remembered he'd told him to. "Go wait in the car," Matt said as he walked inside, not bothering to look back.

He picked up what he needed, along with some generic painkillers, a Dr. Pepper and a bag of Doritos. He was starting to feel hungry. More pressingly, he was feeling strung out and craved painting. Or maybe he was craving the drugs, he wasn't sure. Back at the car, Ryan was waiting dutifully. Matt grinned at him, pleased he'd done something right.

Next they went to an art store where Matt bought canvas, black paint and thinner. He was doing fine on the other supplies, as far as he remembered. He winced at how much the canvases ran him. He put them on his credit card, then wondered how long it would be before Janice took him off the account. _Need cash_. He still had seven diamonds from the heist, but they all had etchings on them and were identifiable as stolen.

He loaded his stuff into the trunk, still favoring his right arm. He got in and opened the bag of chips. Ryan waited for directions. At the moment, Matt wasn't inclined to give them. He most wanted to go home and paint, but he'd had another idea while leaving the cash register. He turned to Ryan and said, "Do you know any fences?"

"Uh… sell things, fences?"

"Yeah."

"Yeah. There's a pawnshop over on 15th that's okay. I've sold him car stereos and tools I got off porches and out of garages."

"Uh-huh," Matt was re-affirmed in his activity of getting Ryan off the streets. "Does he buy rings, jewelry, diamonds?"

"I… yeah."

Matt pursed his lips and went to the bother of reading the man's mind to find out what he had been about to say, but hadn't finished. It didn't do him much good, as Ryan's thoughts had moved on to considering the best route to get from where they were to where the pawnshop was. Parkman sighed and went through the aggravation of digging. Ryan's brows pulled together and he reached up and scratched at his ear at the slight discomfort. Otherwise he seemed unaware of what was happening to him.

Matt frowned and rolled his eyes. The thoughts were irrelevant. Ryan wasn't sure, but he assumed he bought jewelry. He remembered watches in the store, but he hadn't paid much attention.

_Fine._ "Take me there."

Ryan started the car and took off. They were a half mile down the road when Matt said suddenly, "No, wait. Take me home."

His driver glanced around and made an illegal U-turn in the middle of the street. Matt yelled in surprise. "What the hell?! What are you **doing**?" It wasn't that different from how Ryan had been driving earlier. Basic traffic laws were just general guidelines to Ryan, if he was aware of them at all - things that applied to other people and not so much to himself.

Alarmed by the yell, the car swerved back and forth as the young man spent most of his time looking at Matt, not where he was going. They ran up over the curb, forcing a pedestrian to dodge out of the way. Had the lady on the sidewalk been inattentive or slow, they would have hit her.

_Pay attention to the road, not me!_

The driver's eyes snapped to the road, swerving again and getting properly into his lane. Another car passed by, honking at his bad driving. Ryan gave them the finger dismissively. The gesture incensed Parkman, who was already on edge from getting scared by the U-turn and nearly running someone down. Enraged, he reached into the man's mind and took control of his body.

The car swerved again, several times, as Matt tried to adjust to the different experience and perspective of driving via possession, without entirely giving up his own body. It was awkward. Ryan was fighting with him, mentally, the whole time as he struggled to control himself. Matt had him pull the car off the road and into a strip mall parking lot, come to a stop and put it in park.

As Matt withdrew, he forced an impression, a sensation of burning into Ryan's mind, making his feel his entire body was on fire. The man began to flail and writhe. Matt reached into him again and clamped down on all voluntary muscles, locking him up, leaving him unable to do anything but sit quietly and feel himself in agony. After most of a minute, Matt relented and released him from both the fire and the lock.

Ryan whimpered and tried to curl up, away from Matt. He didn't know what the older man was doing to him, but he definitely knew who was doing it. An impotent, terrified rage washed through him. Matt smirked sourly at the things Ryan wanted to do to him and was too afraid to try.

_Don't flip people off_.

Ryan whimpered again, making inarticulate mutterings. Matt knew what he was thinking though. He chuckled. "You want your mommy? Your mommy isn't here, Ryan. Now straighten up and drive the car, or I'll do it for you."

With great difficulty, Ryan sat up and ran his hands uneasily around the steering wheel. He reached down to the keys and turned them, grinding the engine, because the car was already running. He inhaled sharply, looking between the keys and Matt in horror, terrified of what even a minor mistake would cost him.

Matt rolled his eyes. _Great. Just great. He's too fucked up to drive. Well, I guess I could use the practice at possession. Didn't know that was really possible, anyway. Sylar managed it, of course, but that was kind of different. _He entered the man's mind, trapping his consciousness, walling it off, even as Ryan tried to struggle against him again. He hadn't expected it would be much of a fight, but he'd let Ryan become utterly terrified, flooded with adrenaline. Matt couldn't make him move smoothly with so much resistance, such fear and hate coursing through him.

Frustrated that he couldn't do what he wanted, Matt hit him again with fire, letting him cook for a few minutes before finally taking the pain away. Parkman sniffed and looked over with a grimace. The young man had wet himself at some point. Now he only twitched, his mind nearly broken, his sanity questionable. Parkman considered that he'd probably pushed the youth too far. He wasn't sure how to stabilize him, but he knew if he didn't, then he might as well go bury him somewhere because he wouldn't recover.

Matt projected something of himself into the young man's mind, giving him feelings other than fear, something in his mind other than gibbering. He waited as patiently as he could, which wasn't very much and probably not enough. He was trying to give him a baseline consciousness to cling to, something calm. It was foreign, but Ryan eventually latched onto it, accepting it because it made more sense than what was left of himself at the moment.

Matt reached through the man's mind to move his body and found it easier now that he'd exhausted him with the torture. He lifted Ryan's left arm and counted off his fingers. Some further part of Ryan's grip on reality faded as he watched his body used as a marionette. From his perspective, he'd entered some sort of nightmare like he'd seen on horror movies. He surrendered and retreated into senselessness. Parkman let him. It was easier. In the meantime, he needed to drive home.

It took him a moment to remember why he'd been putting Ryan through this, why he'd told him to turn around in the first place. Then he had it: he needed to go get the diamonds! That was it. That was why he'd told him to turn around. He'd been hurting him because Ryan had severely pissed him off by scaring him with his incredibly bad driving, then flipping someone off over it. Matt possessed him entirely, leaving his own body insensate in the passenger seat. He touched himself briefly. It felt creepy to see himself being touched, but feel nothing except the sensation of touching, not of being touched.

He shivered… or more accurately, Ryan's body shivered. He put the car in drive and headed out. It was much easier to drive when he was seeing out the eyes of the person doing the driving. The total control was simpler than partial and at this point he'd crushed Ryan's mind enough that he wasn't interfering.

At his apartment, he switched back, not wanting to leave his body unattended. Instead he left Ryan sitting in his own urine, too traumatized to do more than stare off vacantly with tears running down his cheeks. Matt took his painting supplies upstairs. He paused and looked at the regression paintings, remembering his moment of pleasure that Ryan had thought it was good. It gave him a weird feeling. He ignored it. He put his stuff down and collected two diamonds, then went back downstairs.

The boy was still sitting in the car, having become vaguely aware of his surroundings in Matt's absence. It was better than he'd been when the older man went upstairs. His eyes caught on Matt and he began to shake. Parkman controlled him, not letting him get worked up this time. He cut him off and suppressed the boy immediately, driving to 15th street, whereupon he had to dig through the captive mind for the exact address.

Parkman walked in the pawnshop in his own body and presented his wares. The owner studied them for some time, asking the usual questions. He offered far too little for them, less than half what Matt had gotten per diamond for the five he'd sold months ago to finance his apartment. Matt hadn't used his powers then, relying on simple haggling and picking a place willing to take stolen goods without too much question. That place had been busted a few months after, but Matt had gotten away clean. He'd been lucky. He wasn't feeling patient enough to negotiate, especially with a known fence for the criminal underworld. He just used his ability.

_Double it. Make the deal._

Blinking, the man offered to double his price. Matt accepted. He looked at the camera on the wall behind the counter, targeted right on him as he stood next to the register. _The diamonds will check out as stolen. They might trace it here. If they do, they'll check the tape and see me. I can't keep relying on luck. I've probably already got the cops looking for me for questioning about that double murder._

_Destroy your security camera footage from today. Do it now._

The man stopped in the course of counting out money and headed off to do as directed. Matt looked at the unattended cash. He scooped it up and flipped through it. It was enough. He craned his neck to look in the register. There was more though. The man came back, looking at the money in Matt's hand and getting alarmed. He was being robbed. Parkman interrupted his thoughts before he could reach for the panic button, thinking to him, _Tell me the truth. You want to cooperate with me. Do what I tell you to do._

"How much money do you have left in there?" Matt asked.

"Ah… a little over thirteen hundred. After that." He gestured at the money already in Matt's hand.

"You have more in the safe somewhere?"

The man nodded.

"Fine. Give me an extra thousand."

The man did. He looked very sad as he gave his money away.

_Don't buy stolen goods. Don't report me to the cops._

Matt started to leave, then he reached out and took his diamonds with him. There was no reason not to.


	10. Down the rabbit hole

Ryan cowered in the corner of Matt's apartment where he'd been told to stay, like a dog. And like an obedient dog, he stayed. At the moment he wasn't able to think about how degrading that was. The very strange man who had kidnapped him was working in the middle of the room, painting in a bold and decisive style. His eyes were frosted over, glazed and indistinct. He was ignoring Ryan entirely, something the boy had no intention of changing. Matt's attention was the worst thing he'd ever encountered in his short life.

He was shaking, so he held himself, knees drawn up to his chest. He was unable to come to terms with what had happened. It had all been so quick, just one day… just a few hours. He'd been hanging out with his friends, talking shit about what they'd do if they ever found a sparkly vampire and the various ways they'd kill it, when this dude drove up. He didn't even know the man's name. Surely someone had said it at the hospital, but Ryan hadn't listened, hadn't heard.

Now he felt some odd sort of kinship with him, or a bond or a link or an awareness… something. He had no experience or word to put to it. A part of Matt was in his head, calming him, steadying him. He clung to it like a drowning man to a piece of flotsam, like a terrified child to a security blanket.

Without that, without the feeling that someone else thought what was happening to him was reasonable and sane, he'd lose all grip on reality. It was already tenuous. When the weird man had looked at him earlier, sometimes Ryan just quit existing, or he did strange, inexplicable things, or he lost control of his body altogether. He didn't want the man to look at him again.

He was still damp from having wet himself at some point. He honestly had no idea when. He was still trembling. It was a constant thing as he fearfully watched his captor and waited. He wasn't sure what he was waiting for – something, anything. He couldn't leave, he knew that much. He wasn't sure why he couldn't leave, but he couldn't. His mind wouldn't form the right thoughts. He was compelled to stay. He didn't move, afraid he would attract attention.

Matt came out of his trance somewhat later and examined his paintings. All three were of a theme. He cocked his head at them. The first was very similar to drawings Molly had done years ago, showing a pair of eyes with the Company symbol between them. Back then, those had been Maury Parkman's eyes, Matt's father. The next painting was clearly of his father, his father's face and nothing else. His eyes were abnormally large, hypnotic. The last was also of Maury, this time pointing at a pair of figures on a bed: Matt embracing (perhaps making love to?) a voluptuous, brown haired, broad-faced woman. A thin sheet obscured the details of their nakedness. She was looking over her shoulder and smiling smugly at the elder Parkman, but her lover looked unaware of the presence.

Matt studied this last painting carefully. He wasn't sure what was happening in it. Obviously, there was intimacy and even now he felt an odd attraction for the woman. She was very pretty. But why would he make love in front of his father? What was the man pointing at? Why was she aware of him and Matt was not? The Matt in the painting was rendered in a different style - generic and stylistic, whereas the rest of it was unusually realistic. What did that mean?

And who was this woman he felt attracted to? It wasn't arousal at the picture itself, but at the idea of the woman portrayed. He was going to be with her. He knew it with certainty. He shook himself away from the thought. It hadn't come to pass yet. He hadn't even met her, but he'd know when he did. He looked between the three paintings. They all showed his father, who was dead without a doubt. Daphne had told him so. She'd seen it and he'd seen it in her mind. She hadn't lied.

Perhaps… it was a shape shifter who looked like his father or some kind of illusion? He furrowed his brow and picked up his journal, making notes of his impressions and speculations. He really needed to know more about this. He wondered why his visions this time were similar, three of a kind, and what that meant. He stood up to put the paintings aside and his sudden motion caused a flinch out of the corner of his eye. He looked over. Ryan was still where he'd put him. At his gaze the boy put his head down and hunched inward, not looking at him.

Matt put the paintings aside to dry and walked over to the boy, who kept his forehead on his drawn-up knees and didn't look up. He rifled casually through his mind. The young man had recovered a lot, but despite that he was still on the brink of hysteria. He was shivering with fear and it had gotten worse as Matt approached him. Parkman made him stop, leaving him to experience his terror without that outlet for it. His body found another. He wet himself again and felt a surge of hate at Matt for it. He began to consider how to kill him.

Matt raised a brow. He hadn't prohibited that, specifically, though it conflicted greatly with the directive to help him. _You won't hurt me. You won't let anyone else hurt me. You'll protect me._ Matt waited a beat as the commands sunk in. Something about them turned Ryan off like pulling a plug, as a sense of helplessness and impotence washed through him. His consciousness sunk into torpor. He didn't exactly fall asleep, but he became insensate, defeated. It was good enough. Matt walked back to his stool and sat on it, considering what he needed to do next.

He decided to finish off the cocaine. He had nearly two doses worth left, but he didn't want to short himself on the next one so he'd just take it all now. Or at least, that was the rationale he used with himself. After it was gone, he'd switch to the morphine. He snorted it and wrinkled his nose. He'd be glad to be rid of this stuff. It made his nasal passages numb to start with, then drip annoyingly later.

As the euphoria began to hit him, he looked around the room lazily and had a sort of waking vision. He looked at his paints, touching each one and becoming fascinated to see glimpses of the paintings they'd be used in. Then there was fire – his work consumed by fire. It seemed like there was a long gap between painting and burning though. He stroked his fingers over the canvases he'd set out for his work. He knew what he'd paint on them. He could see it in his mind already. He picked up the brush and made it a reality.

His first painting was of himself shooting up with heroin, a blank canvas in the background, his paraphernalia arranged haphazardly in front of him. The second was of a small yacht at the marina, the name "New Sun" and a serial number clearly visible on it. The last was a cemetery with a fresh, unmarked grave prominent in the foreground. He knew it was Ryan's.

He picked up his previous batch of paintings and became lost in the meaning of the three images. The scenes they represented flowed in his mind, forwards and backwards, possibilities, moments and choices coming together and apart. It was really his father, working for the Company in the past, in the future. Molly had dreamed of him and was dreaming of him again, still frightened. She dreamed of both Matt and Maury, they were the same, interchangeable, both terrifying to her.

The broad-faced woman loved his power. He hated her naked ambition and didn't respect her, but he made love to her anyway. His father disapproved. She tried to seduce him. It worked, but it was Matt making love to her again, not his father, and this time he didn't hate or disrespect her. He saw her as human and whole, flawed and perfect. He drowned himself in her. She kept him sane, gave him direction, she loved him for and despite his abilities. She didn't fear him. She only feared that she'd be cast aside and left behind, used and discarded. He knew he'd do that too.

He started, coming out of the trance somewhat. His phone was ringing. He blinked and fished out his phone. It was Janice. He put the phone down, having no interest in talking to her. He couldn't imagine what she was calling about anyway. His left hand hurt him where he'd been stabbed. In the future he knew it would hurt more, becoming infected. He enjoyed the rest of his trip, phasing in and out of awareness.

When he was finally coming down, he felt depressed and struggled to remember what had been revealed to him. He could only retain snatches of it. His shoulder hurt enormously. He washed down some Tylenol, but had the odd feeling he was forgetting something important. He lay down on his futon and failed to think of what it was he was supposed to be doing. He had the nagging feeling it was more than one thing. He felt very restless and irritable, but he finally slipped off to sleep.

He woke up blearily, with an odd awareness that Ryan was nearby and watching him intently, for once not entirely consumed by fear. He hated him and he still feared him, but he'd calmed in the hours Matt had slept. Parkman rolled over and blinked at him, then wiped at his eyes. The boy scurried back to his corner and drew up his knees, making himself as small and inoffensive as possible. He expected a beating, or something worse, like another bizarre, magical attack.

Matt brought up his mental defenses, toning down the full impression he was getting from the boy. He didn't want to feel how the young man felt about him or see what he expected Matt to do to him next. It didn't make Parkman feel good about himself. In fact, it made him a little ill. He shoved aside the feeling. Ryan was no better than that street urchin who had flipped him off and thrown rocks at him a few weeks earlier. Matt reminded himself of what a pain-in-the-ass he was, stupid, violent, a thief, a drug dealer, who sold date-rape drugs and had done enough to deserve whatever he got. Matt blocked out his own awareness of Ryan's humanity.

He looked at the previous day's paintings. Actually… when was it? It was dark outside. He checked his watch. It was two in the morning, so he supposed that made it the previous day after all. Matt scratched his head and looked over at Ryan. He asked, "What do you know about heroin?"

The young man struggled to put his thoughts in order coherently. It was much more of an effort than it had been for him yesterday, before Matt had worked him over so thoroughly. "Uh… it's… it's a drug. You shoot up with it. Makes you high."

Parkman sighed. He noticed the kid was even denser than he had been, but didn't realize why. The boy wrapped his arms tighter around himself, seeing the disappointment Matt didn't bother to conceal. Matt looked away, picking up the painting of him shooting up.

"Do you know who sells it, where I can get some?"

"Yeah. Mexicans do that. They gotta gang. Pedro knows them, but we don't sell that stuff." He hesitated, then twitched rhythmically and repeated, "I don't sell." Twitch. "I don't sell." Twitch. "I don't sell."

Matt looked over at him and made him stop, giving him a confused look. He put the painting down and picked up his journal, getting his pen. "Tell me how to get in touch with Pedro."

Ryan pulled out a cell phone and scrolled through the address book on it. Matt raised his brows, wondering at that. At any point, the boy could have called for help. _Did he not think of it, or was one of my commands to him interfering with that? _He tried to remember exactly what he'd told Ryan to do, but his memory was fuzzy. He shook it off. It didn't matter. The kid was here.

He wrote down Pedro's number. Ryan also helpfully volunteered his address and added, "No one can sell heroin other than chinks and spics."

Matt looked at him levelly, disliking his word choice. Ryan didn't seem to mean anything by it - they were just convenient labels. _Don't use ethnic slurs._

The young man looked confused. Matt narrowed his eyes at him. Ryan, who had relaxed slightly at being able to provide useful information, shrank back from the scrutiny. Matt exhaled tightly as he discerned the problem from Ryan's mind. He said, "An ethnic slur is a derog… a bad way to talk about groups of people, like blacks or Asians or Hispanics or Jews. Don't use those words."

"Don't use… bla- those words? Which words?" He was trembling again, eyes watering.

Matt put his pen down. It was easier just to give him a list, so he did. Ryan listened attentively, his tremors fading as he managed to have an interaction with Matt that didn't end badly for him. Parkman scratched at the bandages on his left hand idly as he looked at that and considered that Ryan might not be so dysfunctional if he didn't jerk the kid around so much. His hand itched and distracted him from that line of thought. _What was I doing? Oh yeah, finding out about heroin_.

"So there's just a couple groups selling it. Is it stronger than morphine or cocaine?"

"I dunno. I've never used it." After a bit, he added, "They say it's more addictive. There's a lot of places you can inject yourself so you don't get caught, don't leave track marks. I saw this one whore once, who had like a dozen track marks and she had to go real cheap or do it back door if she-"

He stopped as Matt waved him off. "Ryan, I don't want to know that. Stop." Parkman shook his head, trying to get rid of the disturbing images he'd seen in the man's mind. "Don't even think about that." This elicited another wave of confusion as Ryan thought about not thinking about something until Matt told him, "Just… count to one hundred, okay?" Ryan began to count out loud. Matt added, "To yourself." Ryan continued to count audibly, but now he whispered. Matt gritted his teeth.

He listened until Ryan got to eighteen, whereupon Matt got up and went to take a shower. When he got out, he directed Ryan to go clean up, though he realized the kid didn't have any clean pants. There was no way he'd fit into anything of Matt's. He'd look like a clown. On the other hand, Matt reflected, what he looked like hardly mattered. He could send him into the store alone and undignified while Matt waited for him outside. He resolved to do just that and gave directions to make it happen.

A few hours and a trip to an all-night Wal-Mart later, they were sitting in a donut shop near Los Angeles' largest marina, waiting for it to open. Matt had a boat to look at. He wasn't sure if it was here, but he had to start somewhere and it was the only lead he had. For once, he didn't feel like painting again, though he had to admit the urge to take one of those morphine tablets was there in the back of his mind. He hadn't taken any of the legal medication yet. For some reason, that nagged at him.

More in the front of his mind, at the moment, was a little experiment Matt was conducting. Ryan was staring at the donut case, having devoured his single pastry almost the moment Matt gave it to him. He wanted more and Parkman was aware of that, but he was waiting to see if the man would ask him, order more himself or just suffer in silence.

The older man knew he still had money - he'd asked before they left the apartment, making Ryan turn out his pockets and reveal everything he had on him. The kid should only have thirteen dollars left after buying jeans, but it was plenty to get donuts. He was certain he hadn't given him any command that might keep him from asking or helping himself.

The foremost thought in Ryan's mind was that he might eventually be given another donut if he was just patient enough, if he made it clear through hints and passive-aggressive appeals that he wanted more. He seemed to think, at least on some level, that Matt would take care of him and provide for him. Matt was curious how this would play out - if he'd ever get smart enough to realize that wasn't the case.

Ryan went hungry.


	11. New Sun

**A/N: I know next to nothing about boats and I didn't do much research, so… apologies. Feel free to review and correct me. (Yes, anything for reviews!)**

Matt paced down the wooden walkway, looking at the various boats tied up there. The one he wanted wasn't here. It would be further over, with the larger, richer boats. He wasn't sure how he knew this, but he did. He couldn't quite see the future now, but he had a sense, a sort of premonition of how things were going to go, like a gut feeling. He was going to find the New Sun, go out on it, and spend a lot of time on it. It was his, or it would be as much as mattered. It was nice to be so sure of things. The world had never made as much sense to Matt as it was making lately.

Ryan trailed along after him, eyeing the boats they passed. Parkman could see in his mind that the young man was cataloging various things in them he might steal, or would at least be worth stealing if Matt would just slow down enough for him to do it. He seemed to be pulling back together after the trauma of the previous day and settling back into being what Matt thought of as a menace to society. Matt wondered if there was any amount of punishment that would make Ryan 'safe' to leave to his own devices.

This place was a gold mine to the young man's way of thinking. Matt stopped and turned, facing him. The man almost skidded to a halt and backed up, breathing harder. Parkman turned away and looked at a nearby speed boat, as if that was the reason he'd stopped. The fear response from the kid was almost automatic, as was Matt's annoyance at it.

He waited, listening to Ryan's thoughts as he calmed back down. Luckily, the boy had a short attention span. When he thought Matt's focus was elsewhere, he relaxed and went back to looking around. Matt cocked his head. It was harder if he wasn't looking at him, but Ryan was keyed to him now. He could enter his mind under virtually any conditions.

_Don't steal things._

He waited a beat to make sure it was received correctly. Ryan was looking at his back intently, aware there had been some sort of communication and not sure what it meant. He knew the meaning of the command, but not how it had been delivered. He wasn't even consciously aware of the command itself, but he had a nagging feeling something had happened. Matt started walking again. His shadow followed. He found the New Sun about fifteen minutes later.

Parkman knew very little about boats. This one was a yacht, or so he assumed. It was big by his standards at some 30 feet long, but given some of the other craft nearby, he could see it wasn't even really medium sized. It didn't have any sails, which distinguished it from most of the other boats in this area. He walked back and forth on the U-shaped walkway around it, trying to figure out how to get on it. He combed through Ryan's mind, but the boy knew less than he did.

Finally he went for the ladder at the rear of the vessel, which was awkward and difficult to get to. His shoulder ached with a sharp pain as he reached, hurting only after he was committed to the motion and couldn't go back. He cursed. He felt blood trickle down his back from the pulled stitches and he cursed again.

Ryan followed him with an ease and athleticism Matt envied. The boy might be dumb as a rock, but he was wiry and healthy, even if he was currently exhausted from spending a sleepless night terrified Matt might wake up, which of course he eventually had. And he was still hungry, having eaten only a hamburger the day before and a single donut so far this day. He remained obedient and entirely uncomplaining, which was a marvel. Parkman wouldn't have expected him to complain out loud, but he was surprised there wasn't at least some inner protest at the bad treatment. Matt wasn't sure whether to attribute that to his powers or the boy's personality. He shrugged it off and searched the vessel.

He found two things worthy of note. The first was a box of electronic gear and several control panels at the rear of the boat, along with some winches, cabling and a grappling magnet. The other was two fifty caliber rifles with long range scopes and what appeared to be an anti-aircraft gun. Ammunition was stored with them, concealed in compartments built into the decking. Guns of this size could punch through the hulls of even some of the metal-clad vessels used by the Coast Guard.

He'd stumbled across it by accident while kneeling to look in one of the cabinets, noticing the flooring gave just a little more under his weight than it should have. After examining the guns, he put them back carefully. This was no simple fishing boat.

Parkman sat down in the cabin, thinking about things and trying to bring forward in his mind the lingering surety that the boat was important, would be important. Ryan came to sit across the cabin from him, eating an apple. "Where'd you get that?" Matt's brows drew together, distracted from his thoughts for the moment.

Ryan pointed at a mesh bag of fruit that was hanging from the ceiling of the galley. Matt looked at it, confused. He looked back at Ryan. "Isn't that stealing?"

The young man looked at the apple and then at the mesh bag, his mind blank. After a long beat, he said, "Uh… no?"

"What do you think stealing is?" Matt wasn't really offended that the kid had taken an apple. Actually, it was kind of reassuring after the weird behavior at the donut shop. The older man was trying to understand his own ability and why it worked sometimes and not at other moments.

Ryan shrugged and didn't answer, looking conflicted. He was afraid anything he said wouldn't be the answer Matt wanted to hear. He couldn't think of what to say that was truthful, that would also help. Parkman didn't need him to verbalize though. Stealing, to Ryan, was taking something and selling or trading it.

One stole for financial gain. It wasn't stealing to take someone's car, drive it around for an hour and leave it parked somewhere else. That was just pranking. It wasn't stealing to take fruit off someone's counter or out of their garden, even without their permission because it was obviously meant to be taken, but it _was_ stealing to take it from a grocery store. Matt's brows pulled together at the odd definition.

Matt's thoughts on this were interrupted by the arrival of people outside the vessel. He heard a man's voice, apparently speaking into a telephone because there was only one side of the conversation. Despite that, Parkman sensed two minds. They stopped outside the boat.

He heard, "Yeah… Yeah… Uh-huh, today at noon. … Yeah. … Well, it looks pretty good, very calm. You've seen it. … Uh-huh, they're coming. … We'll see. … I'll call you when it's done." Then, in a different tone of voice, he said as if in an aside, "Go ahead and get that, will you? Thanks." He shifted back to his phone voice and said, "Right. … … I will. … Listen, I've got to go, we're here already and I need to get loaded up. … Uh-huh. … Yeah, thank you again. We'll talk later. Good-bye." He sighed heavily.

There was a clatter of sound and the boat shifted slightly. Something was folded out and set against the walkway, bridging the vessel to it. Two men shared a short laugh. "Chatter, chatter, chatter. He has to know every single time, like we haven't done this dozens of times before," the man said quietly, then added a little louder, "You go first. I've got this end."

Matt leaned out a little and looked out the door he'd left open to the deck. The darkness of the cabin concealed him for the moment. He saw two men come on board over the side, bringing with them a very large ice chest. They stowed it to the side, out of the way, next to the cabling and magnet.

The man who had been talking was in his mid-40s, wiry and lean with a goatee and thin brown hair. He was weathered and tan. He must have caught something of Matt's movement, because he inhaled sharply and jerked himself to the side, out of line of sight. The other man, a very tall bald man of the same age, jumped the other way a second later.

Matt called out, "I'm with LAPD!" The bald man had pulled a gun. The other was wishing he'd carried his. They hesitated at Matt's words and he saw the edge of the hand of the guy who had been on the phone. He was making a calming gesture at the bald man. A moment later, he edged around the entry to the cabin, both hands clearly in sight.

"What's wrong… officer?" He glanced around the cabin, but Ryan had pulled his legs up at some point and hidden himself on the other side of the bulkhead. He wouldn't be visible unless the man came considerably into the room. Matt mentally congratulated the boy for fast thinking. Street smarts, Ryan had.

"Detective, actually. This boat is part of an investigation."

"Ship."

"What?"

"It's a ship."

Matt eyed him. It was an important distinction for the man, a point of pride. This was his ship and he felt very strongly about it. He wasn't surprised it was part of an investigation though. He figured it was for the drug smuggling. Matt said, "Tell me about the drug smuggling."

The man looked around the cabin again and asked, "You came here alone?" He was thinking Matt was either an idiot, or he was an idiot looking for a bribe. So far, it seemed safer to have his partner shoot him and then they'd dump him in the ocean later.

Since thoughts of murdering his truly were floating around, Matt felt moved to defend himself. _You won't hurt me and you won't let me get hurt. You like me. You trust me. I'm an old friend. Tell me the truth and do what I tell you to do._ They seemed like good, all-purpose commands. With a little effort, he projected the same to the bald man outside, who put away his gun. Matt could read his thoughts enough through the wood of the cabin wall to sense his actions, even if he couldn't see him.

The other man smiled and relaxed. "Hey, you gave me a good scare just then! Why didn't you say who you were?" He hesitated, trying to remember who Matt was. It gave him pause as he tried to work out how he trusted his old friend whom he couldn't remember the name of.

"Matt," he volunteered. "Your old friend Matt." Parkman was surprised to hear an echo in Ryan's mind as he learned Matt's name for the first time. _I never introduced myself to him? Huh._ He gestured at the corner Ryan was hiding behind. "And I brought a… a friend of mine named Ryan. Just to… see how things were going."

"Oh." The man looked uncertainly at Ryan, who scooted back along the padded seats where he could be seen. He was very wary. The older man correctly pegged him as a scruffy-looking malcontent just from looking at him. He was a good judge of people. He wasn't sure at all what he was seeing now with Matt, as his perceptions were clouded by commands. He shook his head and walked back out on deck, trying to clear his mind. After a moment, Matt followed him. He seemed like too dangerous a man for Matt to leave alone so soon after turning him.

"So, honestly, tell me what you're doing here," Parkman said.

The man shrugged, trying to work out how much he'd told Matt before. He couldn't remember anything he'd told him about the shadier side of his business. So he said vaguely, "We're just going out on the ocean today, maybe do some fishing. You know how it is." Despite Matt's command, he was still thinking it was safer if they just killed him and dumped the body, no matter how much he liked and trusted Matt. 'Hurt' just related to pain. Killing him was something different. A quick death wouldn't hurt Matt at all. He wouldn't do anything less for his good friend.

_Jeez, this guy would kill his friends? Even Sylar wasn't that much of a stone-cold killer!_ "Tell me about the drugs," Matt insisted. At the strong reaction it got from both men, he added, _Answer my questions. You trust me. You trust me in everything. And you will __**not**__ kill me or have me killed._

Goatee-man said, "We're going out to snag a submersible coming up from Mexico. It's loaded. We'll empty it into the ice chest and-" He cut off as two other people walked up.

Matt was beginning to feel apprehensive about so many people. This was how he'd gotten stabbed just the day before. He couldn't keep track of them all at once or predict how they would interpret his commands. Already he was basically unaware of what Ryan was doing. With these two new arrivals he wouldn't be able to keep a tight rein on the first two. He faded back into the cabin, letting the men he'd already subverted carry the initial contact. As he got line of sight, he directed orders about trust and friendliness and obedience to the man who came on board, then stuttered when he saw the woman. The man didn't seem to understand what he meant other than obedience, but Matt dismissed it as he looked at her.

She was the broad-faced beauty from his painting. He felt an immediate attraction to her, knowing her, knowing he would know her. She was curvy - stacked, they sometimes called it - and showing it off nicely in a form-fitting emerald green outfit with black slacks. She had slightly slanted eyes, marking her as part Asian, but it had to be a quarter or less. Matt blinked at her and shook his head. _ I only left Janice a few… how long has it been? Not long enough. What am I thinking? _It didn't matter what he was thinking, it was as if his fate was sealed.

The man with the goatee looked around to see where Matt had gone to. He called him out of the cabin. "Hey, Matt, get out here. I want you to meet Brandon and Patricia. They're coming with us today. Brandon, Patricia, this is Matt. He's got a guy with him named Ryan, young fella." He didn't sound too happy about Ryan's presence.

Matt came out and shook hands. Brandon was all smiles – he was supposed to smile at old friends, right? He wasn't really sure as he didn't have any other than Matt. Patricia was more hesitant. Matt hadn't affected her yet, being too affected by her in turn. Ryan loitered in the doorway and eyed people, which was all the greeting he gave. He had a really good idea of what was going on here, minus Matt's ability, and wasn't sure they were going to survive it. He was a little conflicted about that, as dying was starting to seem like a pretty good idea.

After Parkman shook Patricia's hand, he tore his eyes from her and concentrated on the two older men, digging for their names. The man with the goatee, who had been on the phone when he'd arrived, was Jason Garrison, though they called him Jay. He was the captain of the ship.

The tall bald man was Elliot McCay, though they called him El and sometimes, jokingly, El Jefe. Jay and El had a considerable amount of military training between them. They were both competent, hard men who had a shared background in the military and now, after varying attempts at civilian life, in picking up drugs they sold to various distributors.

As he got the ship prepped to leave, Jay tried to suggest Matt and Ryan take off. Matt declined. He was still stealing looks at Patricia, not able to believe he'd run into her here, trying to understand what that meant. He still hadn't commanded her and she was beginning to notice his looks. So had her companion, Brandon. It made him think a lot less of his 'friend.'

Jay made a last call to everyone warning them of his intention to cast off, obviously hoping Matt and Ryan would take their cue and depart. Matt leaned on the railing, comfortable among old friends, having no intention of leaving. This was his new home, his new family. He could feel it. He'd never been out on the ocean in a ship this small. It sounded like fun. Eventually he'd find out why he'd painted it.


	12. New Family

They pulled in the gangplank or whatever it was called and folded up the steps before getting the ship underway. Beers were distributed all around. Matt smiled to himself and leaned against the railing, feeling the intermittent cold spray of the water as they headed across the gunmetal grey waters. It was fairly smooth here in the bay.

Jay sent the ship along slowly and carefully. He was very comfortable with his vessel. Parkman picked through his mind casually, struggling from time to time with the normally simple task when waves rocked them. Most days the man took tourists out on fishing expeditions. Since the recession hit two years ago and tourists became scarce, he'd looked for another way to keep his ship on the water. He'd hit on this after the ship Elliott had been using before was confiscated by the Coast Guard. That had ruined El's last partner, who hadn't prepared himself for the eventuality.

Jay had thought, at first, he'd just do two or three runs and then retire, but the money was so easy and so much that he soon decided to keep at it until they caught him. Then he'd do what the smart ones in the business did and flee the country. It wasn't hard to do if you had enough money set by and you weren't stupid enough to do something that made it tough for your lawyer to get you out on bail.

He'd been at this for quite a while now, having already purchased a place in the Baja and set aside money for his three kids in trust funds, where it couldn't be touched if he was convicted (in absentia, of course). His wife had left him some time ago, about the time when he'd finally scraped together the money to invest in his dream: the New Sun. Maybe she left because he frittered away their life savings on this hole in the water. Or maybe he bought the New Sun to get away from her constant nagging. He didn't know or really care at this stage. He loved what he did now, which was more than he could say when he was an auditor.

They left the bay and began to hit the swells of the ocean. Matt's concentration, his ability to read the thoughts of others, began to falter even more as his stomach turned and lurched with each crest they wallowed through. He'd intended to go through every person on the ship, but clearly that was not to be. He tried to keep his composure, but the little ship rolled and rocked through every wave. Every wave brought another surge of seasickness until they were coming one on top of another and he could hardly see for the nausea. No one else seemed nearly as discomfited as he. Brandon came over and clapped him on the back, expressing his amusement with Matt's situation and suggesting various unlikely and disgusting cures. Matt lost it over the side of the boat and set his beer aside. There was no way he was finishing it anytime soon. He was weak and trembling and sweating, knotted and bent with cramps and dry heaves.

Ryan came over and hovered around uncertainly, compelled to help him but having no idea how. Brandon waited until Matt was entirely incapacitated before trying to talk Ryan into tossing Matt overboard as a joke. Matt couldn't tell if he was serious or not, but he recalled with a sinking feeling that he hadn't finished with his commands to Brandon. Ryan appeared genuinely tempted by the idea of pranking Matt in some vicious, but ultimately harmless fashion. Matt couldn't bring his ability together enough to defend himself. He couldn't even talk without heaving and the agitation of realizing Brandon might be about to kill him, cheerfully, was roiling his stomach even worse.

"Come on," Brandon said, grabbing Matt's arm almost playfully. Almost. Matt tried to struggle free of him, but Brandon was much stronger than he was. His fingers dug painfully into Matt's bicep.

Parkman finally got a breath to speak and demanded, "Stop it - let me go."

Brandon did, dropping him casually and heavily onto the bench. He glanced back at Jay and El, who were standing together on the foremast, facing forward, discussing their course or whatever it was that was absorbing their attention. Patty was sitting on the opposite side of the ship, legs curled under herself. She watched without judgment, waiting to see how things would turn out.

Brandon offered Parkman his beer again and Matt pushed it away in annoyance, his head down, trying to master himself. The other man handed the drink off to Ryan, who turned to put it down somewhere that the pitching motion of the ship wouldn't capsize it. When he turned back, Brandon had his hand over Matt's mouth and was jerking him to his feet.

For what seemed like a very long time Ryan did nothing, but as Brandon started to pull Matt towards the back of the ship, he grabbed Matt's other arm and said, "Stop it! Stop!" He hesitated as the other man rounded on him. Even Matt looked surprised. "Don't… You can't. It's not a joke anymore. Maybe… Maybe he just needs to lay down."

Brandon looked Ryan over as the young man tried to move him towards the cabin. His eyes flicked past him to the two older men. In a rare flash of intelligence, Ryan said, "You can't keep both of us quiet."

Brandon tilted his head slightly and then shrugged. "I was just joking, kid." They hauled Matt into the bedroom beyond the cabin, supplying him with a bucket in the unlikely event his stomach found something new to purge. Brandon laughed at him, saying, "Hey, you'll get over it eventually. Get your sea legs under you. Hahaha." He shouldered Ryan aside and leaned close to Matt's ear, whispering, "We'll be further out from shore later. Stay away from my girl or I'll kill you." Matt felt a surge of hate at his retreating back, but he was impotent, unable to lash out at him as he wanted at the moment. Brandon left.

Ryan stood over him with one hand resting casually on a cabinet. He swayed comfortably with the motions of the vessel, untroubled even though he'd never been on the ocean. It was like a very slow, gentle roller coaster ride to him - hardly anything to lose your lunch over. He had no idea why Matt was so sick, but it didn't prey on his mind much. At the current point, he was amusing himself imagining what would have happened if he'd let Brandon do what he wanted. The thought of Parkman wet, cold and indignant made him smile slightly. Matt lay on his back and stared at the ceiling, only barely aware of even Ryan's linked mind. What he was aware of, though, was not thinking helpful thoughts about him and was entirely unbothered by the sea.

Matt turned his head to regard the young man, feeling the usual surge of fear as soon as his attention lighted on him. Ryan didn't like Matt looking at him. Matt didn't care. "Come here."

The man looked around uneasily. He was already there. He didn't know where Matt meant.

Parkman clarified, "Get down here where I can touch you. Get down on your knees."

An expression of revulsion passed over Ryan's face, but he knelt next to Matt. Parkman rolled over and put his hands on either side of Ryan's face, telling him, "Hold still."

He tried to take the man's body. He knew it would be difficult, but he hadn't known how much. Ryan didn't fight him - his consciousness retreated as soon as Matt's began to form in his mind. It was Matt's own body that resisted him, that was causing him problems.

All the churning sensations of movement disrupted him, but he exerted himself, bringing all of his power to bear on the transfer. He burned Ryan out, a large part of him, in the process, like channeling too high a current through a wire. He knew it, but forced it through anyway. It wasn't a fast process. He could have stopped when he saw how much it was doing to the other man, but he wasn't going to spend the trip feeling like this - not when he had an alternative right in front of him. He couldn't rely on Ryan protecting him, especially not against the sort of people he was now trapped on the boat with. The next inventive dodge they figured out around his commands might be the last and Matt was painfully aware he'd done nothing to stop Patricia from simply shooting him.

Ryan's body twitched, blood coming from his nose, eyes and ears by the time Matt was done and he lifted Ryan's hands, aware in his body. The body was still alive, with enough function for Matt to use him competently. He wasn't sure what was left of the man's mind, though. He could find snatches of it, but it was fragmented something like when he'd torn apart Sylar a few months ago. In Sylar's case, all of the pieces were still there even if disordered and they had put themselves back together. Now it seemed there were portions missing of the young man, portions crushed so much by the power Matt had brought to bear that they couldn't recover.

Matt sighed, wondering how extensive the damage was. He stood up, rolling his own body over and covering it with a blanket to make it look like he'd fallen asleep. He was not seasick in Ryan's body. His left hand and right shoulder didn't hurt. His awareness, his ability, was functioning again now that he was in a form unbothered by the sensations of the ocean travel. _Well, it wasn't like I cared much about Ryan anyway. I'll just have to see if I can fix him later, when I'm done. Or maybe this was just his time. It's not like I haven't been feeling that since I painted that grave. It was him or me - Brandon made that much clear._

He shrugged his shoulders and stood taller. He found some tissues and cleaned his face. He ran his hands down himself. It wasn't a bad body, though his ribs and arms didn't feel quite right. Matt probed at them. There were knots here and there, uneven bones that had been broken and healed without medical attention, poorly set if at all. Given his age and that everything was long healed, Matt could only conclude Ryan had been beaten so badly as a child that it was a wonder he was even alive. _No wonder he didn't bother to try to get his fingers looked at. Or… try to get away from me._

Matt ran his hands across his new face. Ryan wasn't anything special to look at, but he was lean, with hardly an ounce of fat on him. It was something Matt could appreciate, just as he appreciated the relative grace and speed of youth. Despite Ryan's background, he was fairly athletic. Matt put on a confident smile and walked out, shutting the door behind him. Now he would enjoy the voyage for real.

For a moment he was put off by the cool reception he got as he reclaimed his beer, or rather, Matt's beer. He drank it anyway. He wouldn't touch it as Matt after he'd put Ryan's lips on it, but he didn't care much what he did with Ryan's body. He looked around at the suspicious, sidelong glances he was getting from everyone. _Oh yeah, they don't think I'm Matt._

He addressed that with a simple command for them to treat him they would treat Matt, again exempting Patricia. There was nothing artificial in her reactions and he wanted to keep it that way. He liked it. He sat near her and asked her about herself, scanning through her mind and enjoying Brandon's mounting uneasiness with him sitting next to the man's girlfriend. He was suspicious, not sure why Matt's skinny, punk friend was now macking on his girl just as Matt had. It was a small revenge for his intentions earlier. Matt intended to get a larger one fairly soon.

She told him lies. He saw through them, but he didn't mention it. She'd gone to college as an art student, hoping to be a graphic designer. She still did, in a way, but her ambitions were changing and she was considering getting involved with television or the movie industry now that she had developed better connections. She was ambitious, far more so than she implied with her words. She told him she was the illegitimate daughter of a big-name producer. He smiled agreeably and nodded. Her real father was an auto mechanic and owned his own shop.

Patty had become involved in the drug business through her boyfriend Nick, a stoner and an idiot, not much better than Ryan for making wise decisions with his life. The smartest thing he did was to start bringing Patty along with him on runs. She was a better read of people than he was and didn't hesitate to put her foot down when they claimed they were short of money or would pay them later. She wasn't intimidated by threats, thinking foolishly that Nick would handle anything physical that happened.

She was wrong and things got out of hand once. It only took the once for her to learn her lesson and learn it well. Nick ran, leaving her to the three men who wanted their dope without having to pay for it. Once one of them looked out the window to see that Nick hadn't gone to his car for a gun, but to drive away, they had her too. They weren't as rough as they could have been, but she didn't fight with them much either. Three against one were bad odds and they weren't taking no for an answer. She retained as much dignity as she could.

She put a knife to Nick when she got back, but he ran again and kept running until he got to Colorado, where his mother lived. Patty took up his business after that, carrying a gun she didn't know how to use and a knife that was more dangerous to her than anyone else. It still put her ahead of many of her customers and made the rest wary.

Her supplier, Kyle, thought she was cute, amusing. He'd been in the business long enough to tell she had no idea what she was doing with her weapons. He introduced her to his supplier, El, with the intention of gaining the man's approval. Kyle had seen her as disposable - some leftover tits and ass from Nick. El didn't see her that way. He showed her how to use what she had, took her to the firing range, gave her lessons on self-defense. He turned her down when she finally propositioned him, having been confused as to why he'd never made a move on her.

El hooked her up with Brandon, who took her as his "date" to various movie industry parties where they catered to a more expensive customer base than she'd had at the university. Brandon sold drugs and sometimes he sold her too. She cultivated contacts and built trust, something Brandon had never been able to do. To her, it was clear El was grooming her as a replacement for the muscular man she was with, so she played the hand she'd been dealt. She mixed. Today she was mixing with her mentor El and with Jay, the ship captain, her first time of being trusted to see how the shipments were picked up. El was having her learn every step of Brandon's business and it wasn't lost on her why this was.

Matt took an interest in the shipments. He'd heard about this while he was a cop, but it was never part of his jurisdiction. The ship went out to the designated GPS coordinates, then dropped anchor and turned on a homing beacon. Then they broke out fishing poles, another round of beers and some shrimp and snacks they'd packed in the ice chest. They talked and laughed as they sat around the deck, waiting for the submersible to find them. They fished a little, but nothing was biting today and their coordinates were intentionally away from the usual runs for the schools.

Brandon made jokes that weren't really jokes about cutting Ryan up for bait. El and Jay fell silent, letting Brandon laugh alone. After a bit they walked into the cabin together and Ryan rose to follow them, worried about letting them be alone with his body in the next room. Brandon grabbed his arm. "No. You ain't going in there, you skinny little fuck." He yanked him off-balance and backwards, getting his other hand into Ryan's hair and jerking his head back faster than he could react. Matt yelled, but he was entirely off-balance and too shaken to stop him. He heard Patricia call out to El before he was falling.

The water closed above him with a splash. He was in the ocean and it was freezing, far colder than he'd expected. It stole his breath. He tried to breathe at the wrong moment and got a lungful of water. The world tilted crazily. He struggled to find "up", finally got his bearings and broke the surface. He coughed, spitting and fighting to get air as waves slapped his face. On the boat, Brandon was laughing at him. Jay and El had come back out and were looking at him. After a frighteningly long pause, as the ship got further and further away from him with each passing second, Jay picked up a life preserver with a rope and tossed it out to him. He had another moment of panic as Jay tossed the end of the rope into the water as well and went up to the bridge without a backwards glance. But he turned the ship back and El hooked the rope with a pole as they came around and killed their momentum. The two older men pulled him in silently. Brandon chortled off to the side.

Once on board, Matt glared at Brandon in between racking coughs and spitting out the last of the seawater from his lungs. The moment he was able to, he fully intended to return the favor, except he'd make the other three leave Brandon to die. Jay collared Ryan's body and fairly drug him into the cabin. "Come on, you." Matt stood tensely, trying to read Jay's intentions. He wanted Ryan to stay put inside the cabin. This was important. Jay handed him a towel. Matt began to dry himself off, still digging for answers. He didn't feel he was in any danger. Outside, there was a smack, a howl and a whine of anguish from the deck. Matt jerked around and stared past Jay, who was blocking him. "Dry off," Jay said evenly.

Matt's lips moved slightly, then he did as directed. He could read that Jay and El had gone in the cabin to discuss that Brandon was getting out of hand with _him_, not to do anything to Matt. There had been too many minds to keep track of for Matt to have followed their thoughts as well. Now they were going to punish Brandon for his stunt. Somehow seeing someone else enact revenge quelled Matt's own desire for it. He could tell what El performed on Brandon with brutal efficiency, able to sense the strongly projected thoughts as clearly as Brandon's increasingly muffled sounds of pain.

Matt sat down and after a beat, Jay walked out. There was silence after that. _They protected me. Just like Ryan did._ He had a tremendous feeling of déjà vu, like he belonged here with these people. After a few minutes, El came to the door and said, "Come on out here. No one's going to toss you in the drink. You'll dry off faster in the sun."

He came out. Brandon's bruised face smiled at him with a strange, fawning sincerity. He genuinely hoped he hadn't pissed Matt off too much. That put Matt off.

"Hey, um…" Brandon brought him a beer. "Sorry about that. Really. I was just joking. You know that, right?" He moved awkwardly, holding himself oddly. "It's okay, right?" Brandon looked past Matt to Jay and El, who were watching silently for Matt's reaction. Parkman realized they were waiting for him to pass judgment. Brandon knew that too.

He swallowed and accepted the beer, taking a seat next to Patricia and daring Brandon to do anything about it. She didn't move away from him like he expected. He looked at the muscular man who had thrown him off the ship. Brandon smiled almost painfully and went to sit on the opposite side of the deck, trying and failing to look at ease. Matt put an arm around the man's girlfriend, who leaned into him agreeably. Brandon looked away. Matt gloated for a few minutes, drinking his beer and feeling the woman next to him. Finally he said clearly and loudly, "It's okay." He didn't look at Brandon then - he looked at the two men in charge. They nodded and went back to business.

The woman curled her legs under herself. She felt nice against him, a warm body against his chill, damp skin. She started talking to him again about her interests, since he'd listened to her raptly earlier. He did so again, watching as Brandon alternately steamed about it and was grateful he was still alive. Matt grinned. He was probably stupid to feel safe, but he felt that way anyway. His future didn't include any further danger here. He could sense it. Jay and El came back on deck a little later and struck up idle, entertaining conversation about some of their adventures in the military. Things relaxed and everyone had a few more to drink.

When they finally picked up the submersible's signal, they started wrapping up the reminiscence. They dropped over the magnet and charged it up. The little machine came right to them. They pulled it up, emptied the contents, closed it and sent it back after El tinkered with the electronics a bit and changed out the batteries. They tossed over most of the ice from the ice chest and packed their new cargo underneath what was left of the beer. They enjoyed another round of conversation, packed away the fishing poles, then got underway again. Even Brandon seemed to have cheered up, but maybe that was because they were clearly taking him with them as they left.

They arrived back at the docks without incident. Jay's ship went out frequently on obvious and well-known legitimate business. Most of why he took people with him to the pickups was so it would appear he had paying customers. The Coast Guard was unlikely to target him, though it was always a possibility. It would happen eventually, he knew. Matt's arrival, claiming to be LAPD, had given the captain quite a scare even if he was an old friend. Parkman mentally nudged him not to care about that, not to be bothered about it.

After closing up the ship, Jay and El off-loaded the ice chest. Brandon lifted his own much smaller ice chest that carried his preferred brand of alcoholic beverage and carried it off to his car, intending to return after taking a moment to talk to Jay and El privately. Patricia said she wanted to check on Matt. Unlike the others, Matt had been reluctant to warn her off mentally. The rest were unconcerned the older man had stayed in the cabin the whole trip. Patty was genuinely concerned he might have died or had some serious problem. It was sweet.

He caught her as she came out of the cabin, having slipped past him while he was seeing people off. She was flustered and said, "I can't wake him up! I can't wake him up! There's something wrong!"

Matt smiled, in Ryan's body. She cared about him, at least in some small, humanitarian way. No one else he'd run into lately gave a crap. It was very attractive. He was sure Janice would have been panicked too, but her overall fear of him loomed in his mind. Patricia wasn't afraid of him. He had a strange feeling that she never really would be. That was also very attractive. He bent down to kiss her abruptly.

She inhaled and stiffened very slightly. He put his arms around her. She was very aware that she was alone on the ship and this man, this young-looking but very confident man, had been the last one with Parkman's body. She thought maybe he'd killed him, or drugged him. She brought Ryan's, Matt's, face back to hers and kissed him more passionately. If she couldn't say no, then she'd be the one saying yes. She had no fear of what might happen. It had happened before. It was only rape if she tried to refuse.

Matt pulled away from her after a delicious, very tempting moment. "No… no… you don't have to do this. I'm sorry. I shouldn't be doing this." He let go of her and backed away slowly. The young man's body had responded faster than Matt's did. Age slowed a lot of reflexes, that one among them. Matt raised his empty hands. He hadn't intended things to go that far, that fast. He'd kissed her without thinking. Her thoughts about it were easy for him to read, but difficult to understand.

She looked at him in curiosity, intrigued that he was turning her down, especially as his body was clearly ready. She glanced back over her shoulder into the bedroom. "Did you do that to him?"

He nodded.

"Why?"

He shrugged. He shrugged because he had no answer he could really give her without explaining about abilities and even though he knew he would tell her about them, this didn't seem to be the time. Her mind leaped to conclusions in the absence of information.

"What are you going to do with him? Now?"

He felt a surge of warmth within himself at her concern. She was asking partly out of curiosity, but what appealed to him was how much she asked out of compassion. She thought he was going to dump Matt into the ocean or something. She wasn't happy about that. She'd been very unhappy about what Brandon had done to him and even happier to see the other man get hurt for it. He'd certainly hurt her enough to deserve it.

He smiled. "He'll be better later. Then I'll get him off the ship and we'll leave." He shook his head. "He couldn't handle the ocean. It's not a big deal." He walked out of the cabin and sat on one of the benches around the deck.

She followed him, thinking he meant he'd drugged Matt to keep him from seeing the pickup, which she thought was very clever, if odd and inexplicable. She walked over deliberately, putting a sway into her hips she knew he saw, and sat next to him, moving herself up against him and swinging his arm over her shoulders.

Matt hesitated at how forward she was, then relaxed into it. She wasn't coerced. She was far more casual about sex than any woman he'd ever been with. Regardless of what experiences she had had to make her feel that way, it was how she felt now. She snuggled herself next to him and waited. She thought a young man like him wouldn't be able to keep his hands off her for long. He finally decided she was willing and there was no command he'd given her that made her that way.

He thought about being in Ryan's body. Was it cheating if he did what she expected, what she wanted? He wasn't with Janice. He felt entirely separate from her. He was in his own life, she in hers. His abilities cut him off from her. Hell, he wasn't even in his own body. If anyone did find out, it would be Ryan's indiscretion, not Matt's. Or so he told himself. He wasn't sure he believed it, but one thing he believed was that he was going to be with this woman. Maybe today, maybe not - he hadn't decided yet - but he would be eventually. He'd _seen_ it.

He stroked his fingertips over her shoulder and upper arm. Her skin was smooth and warm. Her body lay against his, ample without being too heavy. She was young, only a few years older than Ryan's apparent age. She was 23 or 24. She wanted him, to have some control or influence over him, but also the experience of human contact. She wanted him to want her. He had kissed her, showing he did want her, but then backed away, giving her space, refusing to force her. It was a turn on to have her own way.

Brandon came back, seeing them sitting together intimately from some distance. Even though he'd shared her with innumerable men at parties, he was always getting something out of it and he regarded her as _his_. He wasn't getting anything from Ryan. Jay and El were _gone_. He balled his fists. He wasn't sure what he was going to do, but he was going to do _something_. Matt suppressed the urge to roll his eyes. The knowledge he was effectively looking at Patricia's pimp did not help.

_Go away and leave us alone,_ he thought to him before he ever got to the boat, with what Matt thought was remarkable restraint considering he could have told the man to drown himself. Brandon's expression smoothed. He turned and left. The woman, who had seen her 'boyfriend's' look and had been sullenly working herself up to leaving, sat up a bit.

Matt murmured to her, "I'll give you a ride later if you want." He let his lips brush against her hair, moving them lightly against her. The sensations were odd in a different body. It was fascinating. He was getting another erection. He laughed at himself, remembering when his own body had been this young, this full of life and eagerness that it responded so fast to nothing more than kissing a pretty woman's head.

She looked at him and raised a brow, then leaned in to kiss him. They made love in the cabin, only a handful of feet away from Matt's body.


	13. Tranquility

It wasn't until afterwards that Matt realized he was in a bit of a pickle. If possession worked like most other expressions of telepathy, then he had a certain range on it. If he tried to take Ryan's body further than that range from Matt's body, then… something bad might happen. Hopefully he'd just get jerked back into Matt. Hopefully.

He supposed the other passable alternative was getting stuck in Ryan's body - not something he really wanted, despite the rousing sex he'd just had. It wasn't **his** body and he felt that as surely as Sylar had known that he wasn't where he was really supposed to be. The most remote possibility, but the most frightening, was that he'd just be out there, untethered, essentially dead. He wasn't about to risk that no matter how unlikely he thought it was.

If he transferred back, he wasn't sure what shape Ryan would be in. He might be able to operate him remotely, but that had been very difficult before. The kid might do something extreme like soil himself or start sobbing or shaking or something else embarrassing. He didn't want to risk that either.

The thought occurred to him because he'd told Patricia he'd give her a ride afterwards, but now it was afterwards and he couldn't leave without dragging Matt's body along like some outtake from Weekend at Bernie's. She'd probably notice. She'd probably object. So his options were telling her to go find a ride on her own, which was uncharitable, especially given their intimacy, or use his ability on her and make her look the other way.

He supposed there was a third option. He could tell her the truth. He knew he did, eventually, somehow. Maybe now? He'd had sex with her, which he'd also known would happen. _Well… if it goes badly, I can always block her from remembering it, or at least talking to anyone about it._

He was sitting next to her, as the cabin benches hadn't been wide enough for a safe lateral position. She'd sat on his lap and was now at his side, snuggled under his arm again, her hand trailing up and down his thigh. He volunteered, "You know, I can read minds."

She laughed. "Yeah." She didn't think anything else of it, dismissing him immediately.

It annoyed Matt. "No, really. Think of something and I'll tell you what it is."

"That's silly. Stop it." She sounded displeased. She stopped stroking his leg. She didn't intend to play along, but her mind brought up an image nonetheless.

"The Eiffel Tower." That threw him for a second and reminded him of Daphne. He shook it off and listened to Patty's thoughts. A moment later he added, "Big Ben. The Kremlin. The White House. This boat."

She leaned up and out from under his arm, staring at him.

"Now you're afraid of me. Now you're starting to believe me. Now you're thinking of what I could do with this, how I could make money at it and blackmail people."

Her mouth fell open slightly.

He smiled. "I can tell people to do what I want and they do it. Jay and El and Brandon never saw me before today. I told Jay and El we were old friends and they believed me. I didn't use it on you though." His voice softened and he reached out to touch her face. She shut her mouth, letting him touch her. He smiled, answering her thought, "Because you're pretty and I wanted to be with you without making you do it. It's not… I don't…" He dropped his hand and looked away, sitting up straighter.

"You don't want to… rape… people?"

He nodded.

"How would I know?"

He looked back at her and smirked. "Yeah, I suppose that's the catch." His smirk fell and he frowned. "You wouldn't. Only me. No one else can ever really be sure." He shrugged. "Well, _**I**_ know. That's all that matters. I didn't hurt you, did I? You wanted to do that?"

He looked at her intently and was pleased with what he saw. She didn't nod, considering her motivations and trying to imagine what it felt like for him to make her do it against her will. She began to not believe him again, then ran through what he'd said of reading her mind. She couldn't reconcile how accurate it was. He watched her thinking it out. Finally she pushed it aside and said, "That cop in there… what did you do to him? Just tell him to sleep?"

Ryan's body smiled. "No. That's… that's actually my real body. This is just a kid I…" He sighed. "He's nobody. No one's going to miss him." He felt sort of bad about that. He'd had a phone call earlier, but he'd ignored it.

She was eyeing him. "What… How can I believe that? It's…" She shook her head.

He shrugged and stood up, getting himself dressed again. He went to the head to relieve himself, in case Ryan reacted as badly to the swap as he suspected. When he got out, she'd dressed as well.

"I'm going to switch back to my body, which is that cop in there. This guy… He's a basket case without me directing him. He might react a little strongly. Just don't get too close to him. He'll remember being with you, but he knows it wasn't him doing it."

She looked torn between disgust, disbelief and curiosity. He walked into the bedroom and rolled himself over. He put his hands on either side of Matt Parkman's face, concentrating on the transfer. It was much easier… much, much easier when he wasn't being tossed on the ocean. He kept a grip on Ryan's body throughout, but the man still made a whimper when he was done.

Matt waited, sitting up slowly. Patty was at the doorway, watching intently. She'd turned on the light, but it was still dim. Parkman was waiting to see if Ryan would achieve some semblance of consciousness or normal mentality. He didn't. He was afraid, but he didn't know of what. He didn't know where he was. His mind had no linkage between his perceptions and his thoughts. He couldn't express his thoughts. He was like a man without a language, an infant. He had feelings, but no communication, not even to himself.

Matt pulled his mind away finally, not sure what the young man would do with himself. Ryan looked around uneasily and sank to the floor, sitting. He curled slightly in on himself, but he wasn't tense. His breath caught a few times spasmodically. Tears ran silently down his face. He sat there, staring off into the distance. The fear faded into nothingness.

"What's wrong? Is that normal?" Patricia asked.

"I don't know," Matt answered honestly. There was no reason to lie. Parkman bent and took Ryan's chin, turning his head to look at him. The man looked back at him evenly, slowly focusing on him. There was no fear, no hate and no anger. There was sadness and nothing else - no explanation for his feelings, no thoughts, no rationalizations, no plans or expectations. He didn't answer Matt's projected thoughts, though Parkman could feel his mind paying attention to them, just as his eyes had focused on his face. He wasn't reacting, wasn't making sense of things, though he wasn't even confused by it. He was just empty.

Matt released him, watching as the guy's head swung down slowly and he stared off again. "I think I hurt him real bad," he said softly.

"Why? He wasn't like this when you got on the ship." She stepped in and knelt next to Ryan, giving Matt an intent look and doubting that he was the same person she'd just made love to. She shook Ryan - he was the man she had held, the one she'd kissed. He lifted his head and looked at her, recognizing her face and remembering a tiny fragment of pleasure with her. Matt's brows twitched at that. There was **something** in there, still in him, even if it was on an almost animalistic level.

She said to him, "Hello? Ryan? Say something!" She shook him harder, then again violently as he didn't react to the first time. She shook him a third time, almost desperate for a response from him and he lashed out at her, slapping her hard across the face. She fell back, surprised. He stared at her, then let his hand fall as if as an afterthought. He frowned, and his thoughts drifted back into an unhappy tranquility. He'd hit her because he was being attacked and he didn't like it. There was no conscious thought about it - even that had been nothing but a passing urge.

Patricia picked herself up, looking at him warily. "What's wrong with… him?" She looked at Matt, beginning to believe what he had told her was real.

"I hurt him. When I transferred into him, I was seasick. Guess I shouldn't do it while I'm seasick." Matt reached out and touched the kid's head, making him snap it upward and sit up a little straighter so it was easier to touch him. Parkman ran through his physical functions. They all seemed fine. He was just… empty. Matt released him and shook his head. "I don't know. Maybe he'll get better." He scratched at his left palm. The bandages were getting ragged. "I was going to give you a ride?"

"Yeah." She eyed Ryan warily.

Matt stood up. "I can just leave him here and come back to get him later. He's… he probably won't go anywhere." Matt wondered if he would still take commands. He looked at the boy and thought to him, _Stand up!_ To his surprise, the man did, drawing from Matt's command his intention and desire, doing so more smoothly and flawlessly now than he had when his personality had been intact. There was no resistance. Ryan stood. _That will make things a lot easier_, Matt thought. "Or… he can come with us. He'll do what I tell him to do."

She swallowed, looking at Ryan's vacant expression. She weighed her fear against the possibilities of having such power over others. She stepped up to Ryan, looking up into his face, searching between his eyes. He looked back at her blankly, without reaction. She turned, only a quarter turn in the limited space, and looked into Matt's face. She studied him the same way, but he met her eyes, his expressions responded to hers, he was alive, aware and attentive. She kissed him, putting her arms around his neck.

It surprised even him, as she hadn't been thinking about what she was doing beyond trying to decide if any of it was true. He kissed her back immediately, as she was something his subconscious mind already knew, was already familiar with, because he would be soon and hadn't yet.

**A/N: I am reminded of a cat we tried to rescue once, that I found hiding under a projection of our house in St. Paul. It was the dead of winter and I was concerned the animal would freeze to death, so I tried to get it out. I knew the moment I laid my hands on it that it was too late. It was cold, too cold to live. I've handled baby chicks before who were exposed and birds are much, much more resilient than mammals. This cat was gone, even if it wasn't frozen yet. I knew that, intellectually, but I took it inside anyway and put it next to the heater and looked it over. It began to move, opening its eyes and moving its legs slowly. At first I was amazed - I thought there was hope. I coddled the critter, tried to help it along, but then I realized it wasn't getting any better, it wasn't responding to outside stimulation. It was just… moving, by itself. We wrapped it up and took it to an emergency vet, but they told us what I already knew - the cat was dead. The motions were only autonomic reactions and there was no telling how many hours the body had been functioning at such a low level, struggling along, long after the brain had effectively died.**

**Ryan's not quite that bad now, but he might as well be.**


	14. Confusion

For a few days, Matt and Patty went to her place each night. She had drugs and they used them together, but she was taken aback by his foggy-eyed trance state while high. He latched onto her colored charcoals and drew a man leaping in front of a train and himself looking down at his hand, which was suppurating, possibly gangrenous.

He'd warned her beforehand, so the fugue state and the odd artistry wasn't a total shock to her. He still had to soothe her afterwards, finally telling her to _Calm down, don't worry about it_. He caught himself after, realizing it was the first time he'd used his ability on her to tell her to do something. He looked at her evenly, steadily for a long time, thinking about that. He hated her, because she was weak, because all he needed was a moment of fear or anger or distraction and he'd accidentally coerce someone, force them, change them.

He turned away as she went about her life, thinking to himself that this was how it was going to be now for him. It hadn't exactly been an accident, what he'd told her, just like it hadn't been when he'd snapped something very similar to Janice. He had become so familiar with using his powers to overcome the slightest difficulty in dealing with someone that it was second nature. He shook himself and looked at the two renderings. It didn't matter. He hadn't hurt her.

He took the tattered bandages off his left hand to see it looked very much like he'd drawn it. He'd never taken the prescribed antibiotics. Among all the drug use, he had forgotten to take the one drug he really needed, the one drug he should be taking legally and regularly.

He had to go to the hospital, frightened that he'd lose his hand. He left Ryan unattended, part of him hoping the man would expire quietly and save him the guilt of dealing with him. They only kept Matt at the medical center for a day though, pumping him full of medication for the infection and debriding the area. The hand was saved, though they told him it was a near thing. He lost function on the last two fingers.

When he got back, Ryan was exactly where he'd left him, having not moved at all. He had not recovered, though he became alert and aware as Matt looked at him and renewed his mental link with the boy. Matt kept him around, even though he thought it might have been kinder to kill him. He wasn't sure how morality factored into it.

The man would eat if Matt put food before him and told him to. He was eliminate if Matt took him to the restroom and directed him. He would carry out any simple task as long as Matt was within a few score of feet of him and could spare a sliver of concentration to keep him at it. If Matt had enough attention to spare, then any degree of detailed behavior could be achieved, including carrying on conversation. He could fight, at least with his hands - Matt didn't trust him with a gun and he didn't seem to have he finesse to handle a knife. He couldn't drive or talk on his own, though he did sometimes make inarticulate noises. When Matt pressed him too hard, confusion would fill what was left of his mind and he would cry silently. Matt stopped pressing him too hard.

He thought about blocking him from weeping as he'd blocked him before from trembling, but he didn't. Ryan had urinated on himself when Matt had prevented him from shaking as an expression for his feelings. Now feelings were all he had. It seemed cruel, even to Matt's thinking, to take that one outlet from him. It was the only expression he had now that was truly his. Besides, Parkman told himself, it was a useful indicator. He didn't always pick up on when he'd done too much to what was left of the man.

As the days and then weeks passed, Matt developed a way of living and getting by. He moved in with Patricia. He infiltrated the drug ring he'd found himself in, the one he knew he'd be part of because he could see it in the future, in the present. He didn't shut it down or anything noble like his original intentions had been. He'd lost himself entirely, so far gone that most of the time he didn't even realize it.

The third time out for collecting the submersible, the Coast Guard confronted them on the way back and Matt sent them off empty-handed. Those particular men wouldn't stop the New Sun again. It bothered Matt a little that he was thwarting the people whose job it was to find and stop drug smugglers. They were, in a way, cops like he'd been. He remembered starting this crusade with the intention of stopping people like Jay and El and Brandon and Patty, not joining them. It didn't bother him beyond his next hit though. He forgot about any moral qualms under the influence of the drugs.

He took Brandon's place in accompanying Patty to parties, but instead of giving her to men, he gave them memories of having been with her and collected. She loved having him use his abilities on her behalf. She pushed him to use them more and more. She wanted to be an actress. He made her one. Brandon confronted them once after a gathering. He was never seen again.

He maintained Ryan because he was useful and at times, entertaining. One thing Ryan was extraordinarily useful for was possession. He was a perfect vessel for it, compliant and unresisting. Matt used him when anything dangerous was going to happen. He put the other man's body in the way of danger. Even when Matt wasn't possessing Ryan, his expressionless visage unnerved more than one would-be shooter. It was funny - they would have shot him if Ryan had any semblance of awareness. Without it, they fled to escape uncanny valley.

Matt still got high, switching to heroin once he was out of morphine pills. He lost weight, but he didn't think it mattered much. He'd been heavy to start with. After a few months, he was actually getting a thin. He imagined he looked more fit, even if he wasn't. He vacillated between having a frenetic energy or sullen depression.

He followed his visions. He saved a man from jumping in front of a train - not a suicide, but a stupid attempt to get around the train before it cut him off from the other side. He averted a house fire, saving three, perhaps four lives. He stopped a few muggings and a couple rapes and dozens of accidents. He caused others unwittingly.

His ability seemed to have a mind of its own. Some events that were shown to him were created by his investigations and couldn't seem to be changed no matter how much he tried. Others were easily thwarted because it was fated. He eventually grew blasé about it. If it was to be, then it would be. If he could save people, he would, but he knew that was not always how it turned out. It was okay, so long as the scales of justice in his mind were heavy on the correct side.

He stopped painting, relying instead on experiencing the vision directly, forcing his mind to see the future and hold the images within himself rather than purging them through art. It expanded his mind. Even when he was not addled with drugs, he had a sense of the future. He knew what was going to happen next and he lived his life five steps ahead, going through the motions of the present, exploring the future. He was very rarely surprised, but on the other hand all reality seemed unreal to him anymore. He was disconnected, detached. He waited in the present for what he'd already seen to happen.

He knew his father was coming long before he got there, but he grew, as he knew he would, as he already had, increasingly apprehensive as his arrival approached. There were many paths away from that meeting and he couldn't tread any of them more than a step or two before his father's eyes were boring into his own, staring him down accusingly. For the first time in months, the future was unclear.


	15. Wait till dad gets home

**A/N: The language gets fairly bad. Take it for what it is - an indication of the very strong emotions the characters are having at that point.**

Matt woke up as his father came into the bedroom and told him to get up. The younger Parkman blinked up from the bed, wiping sleep out of his eyes. Maury looked angry, very angry - disappointed in his son. He took off his belt and hit him across the face with it.

Matt woke up with a start from the dream of his father hitting him, adrenaline running through him and making pins and needles rush through his fingertips. It seemed so real, so certain. He touched his face where the edge of the belt had caught him. It felt fine - it had just been another bad dream. He had those almost constantly these days. He slumped back against the pillow. He didn't need to look over - he knew Patty was gone. She must have left earlier for some errand. It was probably a good thing. He had a bad habit of pulling her mind into his nightmares. He shifted, pulled the sheet up and started to go back to sleep.

He shut his eyes and heard Patty's keys rattling outside the door. He smiled slightly. She must be back already. The timing was good. He was awake enough to want her. He tried to push away the premonition it was his father, not his lover. His father was dead, after all. In his mind's eye, he saw the deadbolt slide back and then the main lock and the knob turned - his father's hand was on it, he was sure. It was an irritating certainty, because it was not the reality Matt wanted. He closed his eyes, wishing he could convince himself he was dreaming again.

The door opened. Someone walked in with a heavy tread that wasn't Patricia's. He knew the time had come for his father's arrival, or at least the arrival of the person impersonating his father. The visitor walked directly to the door of their bedroom, which was hanging open. Had Matt been looking, he would have seen his paterfamilias approach. "Get up," he told his son curtly as a way of greeting.

Unsurprised, but still disappointed, Matt sat up and put his hand to his face, feeling the phantom pain of being hit in the dream. He waited to see if that was next, but apparently not - not yet. His father tilted his head like he heard something and walked over to open the door of the second bedroom. He opened it quietly, cautiously. Ryan was in that room, lying on Matt's futon on the floor. He raised his head at the sound of the door opening, but had no other reaction to it.

Maury looked at the man there and exhaled slowly, tightly. He turned and stalked back into his son's room. Matt was sitting on the edge of the bed, recovering from a yawn. He yanked a sheet over himself as the person who looked like his father intruded again. The older man asked, "Is that… _yours_?" His lip curled in disgust, as if he'd found some abused child chained to a bedpost. "Whose else would it be?" Maury muttered softly to himself.

Matt shrugged and grimaced. He was still trying to parse how he was certain in the future this was his dad, but he had his doubts at the present time. He wasn't proud of what had happened to Ryan, but it had worked out okay. He was like a dog, a family pet. He was taken care of, so Matt didn't see what his father was so shocked about. The younger Parkman looked around the room uncertainly for his clothes, still trying to wake up. Maury grabbed his pants from where they were hanging on the back of the door and threw them at him with barely contained fury. "**Get up! Get dressed!**" he said through clenched teeth. He turned on his heel and walked out to the living room, pacing.

Matt staggered out a few minutes later, dressed in only his pants. It had taken him a while to get into them. He was rarely very coordinated in the mornings anymore. He'd be weak and out of sorts for a little while. He rubbed at his eyes and went in the kitchen, starting some coffee. Caffeine would help. He looked over at the angry man in his living room. _Yep, definitely looks like Dad._ He shook his head. It had happened. Things would change now. He wasn't sure how, but he knew they'd change.

His father walked towards him slowly, stopping in the entrance of the kitchen. Matt looked up at him from where he was putting away the container of coffee. Maury was looking him up and down with an intent scrutiny. His son was still shirtless, which did him no favors but made his physical condition apparent.

He was thin, very thin, approaching half his previous weight and it did not look good on him. His muscle tone, that which he'd had, was degraded. His skin was sallow and slightly jaundiced, unusually rough on his face. His hair was coarse. Matt had bags and dark circles under his eyes, which even now, even sleepy and tottering slightly, had a faintly maniacal look to them.

"Matthew," his father said simply, "What have you done to yourself?"

Matt grimaced at him, uncomfortable at being called his full name. Only his parents and teachers had ever called him that and then only when he was in trouble. The question went unanswered. He said, "I thought you were dead."

"I'm not."

Matt grunted as Maury gave him no other explanation. "What are you doing here?" He decided to accept the truth of the future, even if it still didn't make sense yet in the present. This was his father.

"I came to get you." The elder Parkman frowned and rephrased. He was already screwing it up, straying from Angela's advice. He worked on getting back on target. "I came here to give you a choice, to offer to bring you out of this. You don't have to come with me. You can stay here if you'd prefer." He stopped as the door to the back bedroom opened again and Ryan came out, slouching and slightly shuffling. He'd been woke up. He'd heard the new voice. Matt assumed some residual curiosity brought him out.

Ryan stood up straighter and moved more gracefully in a sudden transition. Maury's head snapped around to Matt, who moved one shoulder in something of a shrug. He preferred Ryan to move correctly, so he made him do so when he was around. The boy sat down on the couch and stared vacantly at the older man.

Maury put his hand over his face, closed his eyes and shook his head slowly. "You made a zombie. You made… a fucking… zombie." He dropped his hand and looked at Matt, who shrugged with both shoulders this time.

"He's fine. He's off the street."

"He's _what_?" his father's voice was quiet, dangerous. When Matt didn't answer right away, he paced out next to Ryan and cocked his head at him. Ryan stared at him blankly, but Matt knew his father was in Ryan's head. He could feel it brushing at the edges of his consciousness. Something snapped and Matt could no longer sense Ryan linked to his mind.

Matt pulled himself together and walked into the living room. "Leave him alone!" He shoved his father on the shoulder.

The man let him, ending his connection to Ryan and looking to Matt. "Why? Why do you care? Look what you've already done to him." He pointed. "Do you think I'm going to poke around in there and do something _**worse**_?"

Matt glanced down at Ryan, who was still staring off at the same point he'd been looking at earlier. Matt's presence, Maury's motion, the pointing - none had elicited a reaction. He stared, turned off. Matt reached into him and found all as it had been before, other than the link being severed, but for some reason the man wasn't processing what was happening around him. Matt looked at his father. "What did you do?"

"I took off your glove; took the saddle off your horse. You don't **need** him, Matthew. That's _disgusting!_"

Matt blinked at Ryan, not sure what his father meant.

"What have you been doing with him anyway? Keeping him around like some brain-damaged tard? Do you use him in the bedroom like a blow up doll, maybe ride him to have sex with that woman you keep?" At Matt's expression, Maury staggered back a step in surprise. One of those last things he'd said was true. He'd been grabbing at what he thought was the worst possible thing he could be doing with the man. "Oh God, Matthew," he breathed. He hadn't seriously believed he might actually be doing any of that.

Matt snarled at him, "I've had enough of your disapproval, '_**Dad'**_! Now get out. Get out before I **make** you."

Maury matched him. "Is that your answer for everything these days? Control everyone who disappoints you, disagrees with you, argues with you? What did this one do to you?" He gestured at Ryan. "Give you the finger?"

Matt flinched again as his father guessed far too close to the truth for his comfort. "_Get out!_"

He thought his father would fight him, resist him, stay there and argue with him. He figured if anyone could, it would be his dad. For a moment it looked like he would, but then he turned and walked out. He stood on the other side of the door for a moment, in the hall outside the apartment. He turned around, having done what was ordered.

Matt exhaled as his father merely stood there silently, saying nothing. He was looking at his son standing next to Ryan, looking at Matt's poor health, thinking about his instability, feeling sorry for him… but Matt knew none of this. He looked at his father and couldn't read his mind like he could everyone else's. He had to rely on his expression and right now it was difficult to make sense of.

In a strangled voice, his father said, "Please Matthew, please. Think about this - think about it very carefully. This is one of those choices you have to make and only you can make. I'm willing to walk away from here and leave you…" He gestured past Matt at Ryan. "… leave you to it. If that's… if that's how you want to live." He took a deep, steadying breath and leaned one hand on the doorframe. He seemed uncomfortable with what he was saying. What he was uncomfortable with was that it was true. He would leave. That was how it worked with precogs, or so Angela Petrelli had told him. Lying about what you were going to do was futile.

He went on, "You're dying, inside and out. I'm not a stranger, Matt." His son walked closer, looking at him with narrowed eyes. Maury guessed at the reason for that expression. He'd had decades of seeing into people. He knew what made them tick, what motivated them, what mattered. He went on, "I might not know you as well as you wish I did, but I know myself. I have your power, your ability, Matt. I know… the temptations. I also… I also know how empty that is, how pointless life becomes. You're a good man, Matt. I've looked at what you've done with your life… graduating, becoming a cop, getting married, having a little boy… a **family**, _while _you had your ability - I know how **hard** that is, Matt."

His son was close enough for Maury to look back and forth between his eyes and he did, searching his face. His father asked him, "I can help you. Do you really want me to leave you _again?_"

Matt rocked slightly as the words made an impact. One of the most traumatic events of his life had been Maury leaving them when he was thirteen, abruptly and with no explanation. He'd always wondered if it was something he'd done. He was almost sure it was - things half-remembered, tickling at the back of his mind, a feeling of guilt, but no facts, no clear recollection. Thirteen was old enough to know and see how it made a difference in their life. Maury had been many things as a father, and many of them bad, but his absence had left a hole that had never been filled in Matt's life.

Matt exhaled, then looked down and back and forth across the floor. He walked over to one of the wooden chairs near the table, sank down on it and covered his face. All he could think of was little Matty and how whatever it was Matt had become, it had made him leave his family. He'd left them just like his father had left him, except Matty wouldn't even have what memories Matt did of having a real family, an intact family. He wouldn't know the difference. He'd never know what he'd lost. He drew in a shuddering breath and looked at his father, still waiting at the door. "Help me then," he said.

His father leaned in the door, but he didn't come in. He said, "Do you really want help, or are you just asking because you feel guilty?"

Matt shook his head, uncomprehending. "Why else would I be asking? Of course I feel guilty!"

Maury stepped into the doorway, leaning his back against the opposite side of the frame. "I don't know. I guess I thought maybe you'd feel compassion or a desire to accomplish something meaningful with your life. You know, one of those things you seem obsessed with."

Matt stood up and paced, angry. "What are you talking about? I **have** accomplished meaningful things in my life! I've saved people." He held out his hands at his father as if showing him something. The older man looked at them like they were stained with blood. "I've prevented horrible things from happening!" He threw up his hands at his father's look and snarled, pacing away. _I ask for help and I get more recriminations?_

Maury stepped into the room as Matt turned and came back. He pointed at Ryan. "Did you save him? Did you stop _that_ horrible thing from happening?"

Matt paused, looking at Ryan with dead eyes. He'd been a piece of street trash. Matt had removed someone who was a drain on society, a leech, a festering wound who went around hurting people and causing problems on a daily basis. As moving as his current state was, it was difficult for the younger Parkman to feel he'd done something wrong. He snapped his head back to his father and said, "You don't know what he was before I got to him."

"Oh yes I do," he said, his voice deep and thick with emotion. "Matthew! He was a **MAN** before you got to him. He was a _human being_." He shook his head, lowering it, reaching out towards his son. "He's not that anymore."

Matt swallowed and walked further away. "It doesn't matter," he muttered.

"It doesn't matter?" Maury's voice rose. "It doesn't **FUCKING MATTER?!?** What the fuck are you, Matt? It doesn't _fucking matter!?_" His face twisted in rage. He grabbed at his waist, unclasping his belt. For a moment Matt was confused, thinking he was going to drop his pants but then he remembered the dream. Matt stood there silently. He was going to be hit. There was no point in trying to evade it so he didn't even try. His father took off his belt and struck him across the face with it.

The pain woke Matt up to the here and now, rather than the inevitable and unavoidable. It didn't matter if it was fate, that had hurt like hell! He grabbed his face and lurched away, cursing. His father said, voice heavy, "Turn around!"

"What?" he looked up at him, head pulled in, wary. The other man was still holding the doubled belt up like a weapon.

"I said fucking _**turn around**_! I'm going to hurt you for what you did to him because it fucking **DOES MATTER**!"

Matt glared at him. He wasn't a kid.

His father stepped closer to him. Matt held his ground, balling his fists. The older man said huskily, "It's the only revenge he's ever going to get for what you did to him. That's your **body**." He pointed at Matt. "It will heal. This," he lofted the belt, "might hurt, but you _will_ heal. What you did to him can't be healed, Matthew. It's **over** for him! And if you don't, I'm going to use _**this!**_" he pointed at his temple with his free hand, eyes bright and seeming abnormally large, boring into Matt's. "And in my current state, that's not going to be good for you." He shook his head menacingly and then smiled, baring his teeth. "Your choice, Matthew."


	16. Beatings

**A/N: Language warning remains and we have a warning for physical and emotional abusiveness too. Just in case, you know, the ending of the last chapter didn't foreshadow that enough. **

Matt looked past his father to Ryan, who was still sitting there blankly, calmly. Usually he showed more reaction to shouting and excitement. No longer though did he have a portion of Matt's mind within his, no longer did he have that guidance telling him what to make of the world. Matt realized just how much of the man's reactions were merely extensions of Matt's own emotions - they weren't Ryan's at all. He woke when Matt woke, slept when he slept. Matt had been fooling himself, seeing what he wanted to see.

He knew that now. He could have told Maury to leave. He could have refused, but on some level he felt he deserved punishment. Like his father had said, it was the only revenge Ryan would ever get for what had been done to him. He wondered how much else of his life recently had become self-delusion.

He shut his eyes and turned around. This was going to hurt like a mother-fucker - _and it did_. Maury hit him nearly twenty times, unfurling the belt and giving him the whole length of it across his bare back, holding it by the buckle end. He only stopped because his shoulder began to give out and his arm hurt, but he had to admit Matt had at least taken his stripes like a man.

He staggered away and collapsed onto the far end of the couch, thinking he was getting far too old for this sort of stupidity. He panted and looked at Ryan, who was still gazing off, unmoved by events.

Matt turned around, straightening up and wincing, grimacing in pain. He already had welts; angry, painful ridges across his back. A few were wet, not with blood, for Maury wasn't strong enough for that and the belt wasn't shaped for it, but the intense pressure still made the fluid rise from the flesh.

Maury looked at his son in disgust and shook his head. "I don't know why I even care. You're right. It doesn't matter. He's just a hunk of meat. **Meat!**" He levered himself to his feet and took the belt in his other hand, hitting Ryan full across the face with it. Matt jumped to see him strike a defenseless man, made all the worse by Ryan not even flinching, just swaying a bit at the blow.

"See that? Nothing. He probably wasn't worth anything before, either. What was he? An orphan? High school drop out? Special ed crack baby?!" He hit him again and Matt took a step closer.

"Don't!" Matt said.

His father looked up at him. "Why not? He doesn't matter. He didn't matter to you. Look what you did to him!" He raised the belt again and Matt jumped forward, stopping when his father didn't complete the swing. Very quietly, Maury said, "Why do you care, Matthew? Why do you care **now** what happens to him?"

Matt stepped back, realizing he was close enough his father could just as easily hit him as Ryan… even if it looked like he wasn't going to finish the swing at either of them at the moment. "I… I don't know. Just… I don't know." He looked away. It shouldn't matter. It really shouldn't. Ryan was practically a vegetable. His head came up with a snap as Maury hit the hapless man anyway.

"Stop it!" Matt surged towards him, reaching for the belt but Maury held it away from him and put his shoulder into Matt's chest. They struggled for a moment, though it was clear that Matt would overpower him soon.

Maury said loudly, quickly, "Do you care now, Matt? Do you?" Matt stopped reaching for the belt and backed up. "Does he matter yet?" his father asked him more softly.

Matt looked at Ryan, marks across his face, snot running down his lip now. He stood between his father and the man Matt had ruined. "I'm sorry." It was almost as if he was saying it to Ryan.

"Are you really?" Maury wasn't being sarcastic. He was honestly asking.

"I shouldn't have done it," Matt said dully. He thought back to Janice - the person he **really** shouldn't have done it to. Even there at the end, he suspected he could have salvaged things, if he'd been honest, if he'd been willing to compromise, to work with her, to try. She'd put up with so much from him. She hadn't hated **him** at the end - she'd hated that he'd destroyed their relationship.

She'd been trying to work with him, trying to love him and he threw that all away because it wasn't as easy as he wanted it to be. It wasn't as easy as the woman he was now with, the one he took his pleasure with and gave her nothing in return - at least, nothing that really mattered. He didn't share himself with her, he didn't care about her. He didn't love her, even though he made love to her and was in love with the idea of having her. He'd loved Janice.

"Are you sorry enough you won't do it again, the next time it's convenient?"

Matt looked back at his father with narrowed eyes. "I'm- I'm not going to do that again. I didn't mean to do it to start with."

"Oh?" his father said dryly, obviously not believing him. When Matt didn't answer, he said, "Am I to believe you just accidentally projected into his head and crushed out his personality, his entire conscious mind? I know you're strong, Matt, unbelievably strong, but…" He shook his head. "That's ridiculous. You can't do that sort of thing by accident. Maybe you didn't _know_ it would turn out like that, but you **meant** it."

"I didn't… Okay, fine! Yes, I didn't know it would turn out that way. All I wanted to do was…" He huffed, exasperated, looking at Ryan. "I just wanted to make him act right."

Maury hit him across the back with the belt.

"Ow! God-dammit!" Matt fled across the room in surprise and pain at the agony of that lash on top of all the others. "What the fuck was that for?"

"I just wanted to make you act right, Matt." He cocked his head at him, entirely serious. "Is it working?"

"No, God-dammit." Matt glared at that belt, thinking he should have cold-cocked his father and taken it away from him while he had the chance.

"Do you think it would if I hit you… oh, I don't know, five or six more times? Or fifty? Maybe if I hit you so hard it started stripping away skin like you stripped away this man's identity?" He stepped up next to Ryan and patted him on the head – a strangely gentle gesture, given that he'd been hitting him just a few minutes earlier.

Matt breathed hard out his nose, his lips set in a line. "I get the point, Pops."

The elder Parkman wondered at his son calling him that without the usual sarcasm, but said nothing about it for now. "Do you? My point is that you can't make people act right by forcing them to. Are you telling me you've figured that out? That your power only makes people do what you want them to, not the right thing?"

Matt looked down.

Maury added, patting Ryan's head again. "You don't have any moral high ground here, son. You're as human as the rest of us."

Matt's lips moved, but at first nothing came out. Then he said, audibly, "Yes. I see that now."

"Here's another choice for you. Let me prevent you from using your power unbridled on anyone ever again."

Matt's head came up. His eyes didn't narrow. He didn't look suspicious. He was unsure. "You can do that? You can… stop my ability?"

"No, not really, but I can keep you from abusing it. Do you want that? Or do you want to run the risk of '_accidentally_' doing this again?" He dropped the end of the belt and the tip hit the floor next to Ryan's foot.

Matt breathed a little harder. "Don't hit him," he whispered. If his father hit Ryan again, he didn't know what he was going to do, but his chest was tight with tension. Maury's hand still rested on the young man's head, stroking absently with his thumb. He was too close to swing at him and that was the only thing keeping Matt from launching himself at him again.

"How long have you had him?" he asked conversationally.

Matt looked between Maury and Ryan for a moment, then answered, "A few months."

"That's quite a while." He looked down at him, tilting the man's head around like a handler might do with a dog. "You've kept him fed, clean, dressed. Of course, if you're using him like you implied earlier, I suppose that's a given." He looked up at Matt with a smoldering, barely restrained expression. He looked away and blew out air, trying to calm himself and stay on target. "That's why they're called zombies. They're the living dead. Don't take good care of them and they look like it too. What are you going to do when this one dies? Do you already have a few lined up as replacements? I can't imagine you don't."

Matt pursed his lips. There were a number of people he'd ridden hard enough to damage. Brandon was in the worst shape. Patricia had sought him out and drug Matt along once she understood the full range of his ability. She wanted to see Brandon dance. Knowing how casually the man had used her, Matt didn't see any harm in doing the same back to him. Maybe he'd done it a bit too much. No, he thought now, he **had** done it a bit too much. The man wasn't whole anymore.

Maury said, "So that's it, huh?"

Matt looked up at his father, thinking he couldn't be reading his mind. It wasn't possible. Matt extended himself to Maury's mind, receiving the expected feedback. His father's head pulled back and he resisted, but nothing else. Matt pushed him hard, but he didn't actually hit him or apply himself seriously to getting inside of him. He couldn't be reading his mind if his defenses were that tight. Matt pulled himself back in.

Maury asked, "Is that the life you want to lead?", carrying on as if there had been no mental contest.

Matt shook his head wordlessly.

"Do you want me to fix it so you can't do it by accident?"

Matt nodded, still looking down.

"You'll drop all your defenses and let me do that?"

Matt looked up at him, thinking that if he agreed, he wouldn't be able to stop Maury if the man decided to do something else. At least, not unless whatever else he did took long enough for Matt to realize it and try to stop him. The alternative was living as he had been living. He looked at Ryan's vacant eyes and he nodded.

Maury tilted his head and raised one finger to Matt, then pointed down. Matt laughed. "You want me to kneel, is that it?"

The older man smiled. "Well… that would be funny, but no, it wasn't what I meant. Drop your defenses. I'll do it now."

Matt grunted and shifted. His back hurt. A drop of moisture ran down it. He lowered his defenses, thinking he should at least ask for a better explanation of what his father was going to do, but he was too upset, too off-balance to really think about it. The last thing he thought of was the coffee was probably finished making.


	17. Family Ties

Some time later Matt blinked. Something had changed. He kicked Maury out of his head immediately. The man went without a problem. Matt rubbed at his temple. He hadn't expected to lose a moment there. He looked around for the time, then went in the kitchen and looked at the clock on the stove. It was no help, really, since he hadn't known what time it was before his father had done whatever it was he'd done.

"You only lost a minute or so," Maury volunteered from the living room, even though he couldn't see him where he was standing.

Matt glowered in his father's direction and got down a cup for coffee.

"Make me one too." He heard his father sit down on the couch.

Matt snorted softly but did it. As he poured the second cup, he hesitated. _How did he know I was getting coffee? How did he know I was looking at the clock? _He sorted through his mind and found it - a portion of Maury's mind, in his, just as he'd put a part of his own into Ryan. He'd linked them, yoked them together mentally, though just like Matt had done to Ryan, it was one-way. Maury had built a way past Matt's defenses for him to use his ability on him at will.

He gathered himself and tried to purge it with all of his power. Instead of erasing the presence, it was as if Matt's attack had been solely launched at himself. He yelled, grabbing his head and falling to his knees. The agony was worse than his back - it was like he was trying to kill himself, get rid of himself. The second cup of coffee tipped over at his motion and splashed on him, but it took a second for him to even realize it - he was that lost in the mental pain. He pulled away from the near-scalding water running down his arm, a rivulet down his aching back, and rocked on the floor, holding his head. The whole world was on fire and he was the incinerated core of it. He could barely breathe. Tears ran down his face at it, when he hadn't shed a drop for being beaten earlier.

Maury called calmly from the living room, "It's a feedback loop, Matt. Anything you try to do to me or that link goes right back against yourself. I'll feel every use of your power, every time you use your ability, but it won't touch me. I know every thought in your head."

Matt picked himself up off the ground, carefully reining in his ability, guarding himself against using it accidentally. He staggered out into the living room and glared at his father. "Is there anything to keep me from just killing you?" he asked hoarsely. 

Maury shook his head. "Not a damned thing, Matthew."

The younger man hesitated, his brows pulling together. Surely there was a catch to it. When his father didn't say more, he asked, "Then… why shouldn't I just kill you? That would end it."

The older man nodded. "It would end it. You **asked** me to help you. Do you want help?"

Matt breathed harder and felt weak. He walked over and sat down at the dining room table. _All I have to do is kill him, kill my father. I… I asked him to help me. Do I want help? Do I?_ He stared at the table blankly, unsure. For the last several months, he wouldn't have had to think about what he planned to do with himself, because he already knew. His future was set, laid out. He didn't have to make decisions like this. It seemed bizarre somehow that now he did, like the world had gone fundamentally wrong.

Maury stood and went past him into the kitchen. Matt watched him take a towel and clean the coffee off the floor and the counter, cleaning up his son's mess in a literal fashion. When he was done, he brought Matt's coffee out to him and set it down, then went back and poured himself a cup with what was left in the pot. He brought out cream and sugar. It was in Matt's mind that he wanted it, but he hadn't said. He also brought him a spoon. He set them all in front of his son and sat to join him.

Matt looked at the coffee and remembered being so frustrated at Ryan for not being able to get this right. He shook his head slowly.

His father said, "I can read your mind, Matt. He couldn't. It wasn't his fault."

Matt looked at him and nodded slowly. It was depressing. He had a feeling his future had been decided, settled, but he didn't know what it was. He felt the urge to shoot up and find out.

"No more drugs."

"What?" Matt's head came up.

"I said, no more drugs."

"But… that's the only way I can see the future!"

"Matt, you're not high now and you have a sense of it. Why do you think you need drugs for it?"

His son's mouth worked and he looked away. He had no answer for that – no answer he was ready to accept, anyway. He looked back and doctored his coffee. At least he could have caffeine.

"That's the spirit," his father muttered and sipped at his own, taken black. He looked past Matt at Ryan. After another drink in silence, he said, "I'm going to do something you're not going to be happy about, so I'm warning you first. Don't get physical with me over it, because it's hard, but there's nothing else to be done."

Matt was looking at him intently, wishing he could read Maury as easily as his father could now read him. Maury's eyes went past him and Matt turned to look at Ryan too. He looked back at his father. "Is there…" he hesitated. Maury didn't help him out by admitting he already knew what he was trying to say. His silence meant Matt had to say the whole thing. "Is there anything that can be done for him? To fix him?"

The older man shook his head. "Not within the resources I have at my disposal, no. Somewhere, somehow, I'm sure there's someone who could fix him, but I don't know who since Daniel died and I'm not keeping him around until I find someone. You've already made a mockery of his death by keeping his body around and doing whatever with it. Don't make it worse."

After a long moment, Matt looked at the table and nodded. Most of a minute passed before he heard Ryan fall over on the couch, dying from asphyxiation. Breathing was the easiest of the critical body functions to affect, since the brain was already familiar with regulating it voluntarily. Matt looked back at him. The body was quivering slightly as it struggled to live even though the mind was long gone - gone for months now. He suffocated slowly, the process taking an excruciatingly long time compared to similar deaths on television.

_I'm a coward_, Matt thought. _I should have done that a long time ago, but I was too much of a coward to do it. _He hung his head, trying to ignore the sounds from the other room. He took a cold comfort in the thoughts of the people he'd saved. It didn't make up for the one who was dying on the couch now, but it was at least a comfort. After drinking half his cup, he asked, "When are we leaving?"

"Not anytime soon. We've got your whole life for the last few months to unravel here."

Matt looked up at him, his face falling, feeling dread. "What… you mean…?"

Maury shook his head slowly at his son. "You're not getting to walk away from what you did, Matthew. We're going to fix it, you and I. There are a lot of people out there who aren't living their lives thanks to you. Maybe you think they're lowlifes and maybe they are. I used to be one of those lowlifes."

Matt winced as he felt his father's mind probe through his own. Almost reflexively, he tried to resist it and discovered the feedback loop considered this something it needed to activate against. He jerked back in pain. Putting his tortured back against the chair made him flinch forward again. He held his head and let his father pick through his memories. He was quick about it, at least.

Maury waited until his son wasn't in so much agony he couldn't hear him, then continued, "I used to be one of those pieces of street trash like that young man over there was. I went from gambling hall to gambling hall, played cards, hustled pool, talked people into paying me too much for things I'd stolen. I was a thief, a con man and a cheat.

"Think about that, Matt. Maybe I was a little smarter than Ryan over there, but I was no better than him. I didn't finish high school… hell, I didn't finish middle school. That was me, sitting on the side of the road, looking for trouble to get into. Think about it." He reached out and gathered up the cream and sugar, taking them and his own now-empty cup back into the kitchen.

Matt stared at his coffee and shut his eyes. Maury looked in the fridge and the shelves and finally came out with a box of cereal and a bowl. He put them down in front of Matt. "Eat."

"We don't have any milk," Matt said sullenly. So much had happened this morning. He could hardly think. His head still ached from the feedback.

His father nodded. "I saw that. You can have water, cream, or dry. Pick."

Matt poured the cereal into the bowl and ate it dry. After the first two spoonfuls, he asked, "Why am I eating cereal? Why are you making me eat cereal?"

Maury paused as he went through the cabinets, looking at the food choices. "I'm not _making_ you eat cereal. I'm _telling_ you to eat it. There's a difference and you need to recognize that. Have you looked at yourself lately? You're a wreck. I'm putting you on a diet and it's to **gain** weight, not lose it. I know you were always fat, but the way you are now is terrible. You're unhealthy. I'll get some vitamins. We need to go shopping."

He turned and looked at Matt. "I want to help you. You want to be helped. I can see that. It's not like you have to do what I tell you to, but you sure as hell can't make _me_ do what you want. You're going to have to live with having someone around you can't give orders to. Depending on what kind of stupidity you get up to, I might _make_ you do something, so don't push it if you want to keep your free will, or at least the illusion of it."

Matt huffed, but he ate. "Where's Patty? What did you do to her?"

"I made her give me her house keys and told her to stay out at least an hour. So… wherever she was going, she might be getting back in another fifteen minutes or so. Maybe longer. You should shower up. If you want, I'll put bandages on the parts of your back that are weeping, if you have any. Otherwise just tough it out."

Matt tried to marshal his thoughts. The idea that his every notion was being listened in on was grating.

Maury snorted.

"What?" Matt said, angry.

"Why is it so grating, Matthew? It's the same thing you do to everyone these days, isn't it?"

Matt raised his head. "You can't tell me you don't do it too. You don't have the moral high ground here either."

Maury smiled at him. "No, I don't. I never claimed to, either. You and me, we're down in the mud together. Leave the moral high ground for those fancy-nancies with the white shoes." He walked out of the kitchen and over to Ryan, lifting the boy's legs over the arm of the couch and turning his body so he lay on his back. He reached over and shut the dead man's eyes. "Do you want me to give you some privacy? Butt out of your thoughts and let you plan and scheme where I can't hear you?"

He moved around to put his hands under Ryan's arms and pulled him with a grunt, laying him out on the couch. Maury reached over and adjusted his head so he looked like he was merely asleep. He smoothed the man's hair down briefly with a familiar, intimate gesture.

Matt sighed, watching him, thinking his father was kinder and more considerate with Ryan than he'd ever been. Of course he'd been hitting him in the face earlier with a belt. He was a hard man to figure out.

Strangely, now that his father mentioned it, he sort of wanted him in his head. He was pretty sure it wasn't a compulsion. He sorted through himself carefully, taking a long, slow catalogue. He didn't seem to have a single extra command in there - nothing about trust or obedience or abstaining from harming him. Of course, those could all come later, as his father had threatened. Matt never gave people this long though. Not for months he hadn't.

Maury roamed around in the apartment, eventually finding the linen cabinet and getting a sheet out. He unfolded it and laid it out on the floor. He reached over it and tugged Ryan off the couch until he fell unceremoniously onto it, then the older man knelt and began to wrap him.

"How many people have you done that to?" Matt asked.

Maury shrugged. "Oh, forty or fifty, maybe more. You mean the body disposal, right?"

Matt blinked. "No, I meant the… the… you called him a zombie. How many people have you turned into zombies? Wait, you… you're not reading my mind?"

Maury paused in his work and said, "No. I cut that off. I asked - do you want privacy? You didn't answer."

"Oh." Matt thought about that and picked up his bowl of cereal, turning with a wince so he was facing the living room. His back really hurt, every time he moved. Maury had returned to tucking and pulling on the sheet, getting it arranged as he wished. There was some specific pattern he was folding it in.

Matt said, "Um… no, it's okay. It might make it easier… things like this… you won't misunderstand me." Matt smiled suddenly, bitterly. "You'll know how I like my coffee." It seemed like a ridiculous reason to surrender his privacy, his aloneness, but he was also greatly warmed that his father **had** butted out as soon as he'd mentioned it. "Will you… will you leave if I ask you to?"

"Sure. I'll leave right now if you want. I'll argue with you, but it's up to you." He looked over at Matt thoughtfully, then turned back and tucked the last fold of the sheet over Ryan's head and into the rest. He gave the boy a pat on the chest and struggled to his feet. He rubbed his shoulder, the one that had been hurting since he flogged his son.

"You'd leave, right now, if I asked you to?" Matt said disbelievingly.

Maury nodded and walked over, looking at the empty cereal bowl in his son's hands. "Go take a shower. You smell like shit."

"Thanks, Dad," he muttered sarcastically and set the bowl aside. He did it though.


	18. Recovering the paintings

**A/N: I'm suffering such review-withdrawal it's crazy.**

When Matt got out of the shower, he could hear unfamiliar voices. He dried off a little, just his hair and chest, then wrapped a towel around himself and stuck his head out. He was reluctant to use his ability at all after the feedback earlier. His father was overseeing two strangers taking away Ryan's corpse. They tied him to a stretcher, wrapped him in moving padding, then strapped the whole affair to a dolly. They wheeled him out and Maury followed them, shutting the door behind him.

Matt walked to the window and watched through the plastic blinds as they loaded the body into a straight truck and rolled down the door. His father talked with them a little longer and they handed him a hard plastic box. The truck drove away. Matt rubbed at his face with his free hand and went back to the bedroom to finish drying and getting dressed. He heard Maury come inside. Matt came back out a little later, buttoning his shirt. The box was on the table, clearly labeled as a first aid kit. It was an unusually large one.

He asked, "How did you get a moving van here so fast to dispose of a body? Can you really trust them that quickly?" He was thinking the orders to do something like that were complex, unless you were just sloppy about it. For them to get rid of the corpse reliably, he'd need to oversee it for longer than a few minutes.

"I used the power of technology," the older man pulled his phone out and waved it back and forth. "The Company has a station here. They've been put on alert to back me up. I didn't use my ability at all, though I went outside with them in case any of your neighbors got nosy."

"Oh."

Maury offered, "You need to let me look at your back. You're in no condition to be getting infections."

"I'm fine," Matt said, looking around for his shoes.

"Yeah, fine. Just like your hand there, with two fingers near-paralyzed. You're lucky to even have a hand, you know that? If gangrene sets in on your back, you're gone."

Matt scowled at him. "How much have you been going through me?" He felt through his mind again, wondering how Maury was managing to know his past without him having noticed it. He flexed his left hand. He could still use the thumb, index and middle finger. The other two were just there, with no strength or feeling to them.

"Not much. That's from your medical records. I'm with the Company, remember? Resources. People. Don't need abilities for a lot of this stuff. Now get your shirt off and let me see how bad I messed you up."

Matt grumbled for a moment, then said, "No," his resolve hardening. He did not want to be cared for by his father, touched like that or helped that intimately. Not from him - not from the man who did it to him.

Maury looked at him steadily for a moment, then shrugged. "Okay. Come on then. First thing we're going to do is get me settled in here, then we'll sit down and talk through your acquaintances and work out who we'll work on, in what order."

"You're… you're going to live here?"

"Well, all your stuff is here. Seems easier than moving you into the hotel with me." He put his hand on the doorknob.

"I'm not moving," Matt said firmly.

"Uh-huh. Didn't say you were." His father held open the front door and waited. Matt frowned and huffed, but walked out.

"What does settling in entail?" Matt asked, when they were in the rental car.

"Getting some real food in the house, picking up my suitcase from the hotel, something like that. I think I'll buy one of those inflatable mattresses. Had a friend tell me those weren't nearly as hard on your back as a futon. I'm not sure I want to sleep on your couch. I might stick to something." He grimaced.

Matt ignored the jibe and let his mind wander over the topic of Patty and what she'd do about Maury living there. His knee-jerk reaction was just to make her accept it, but he wasn't sure his father would let him do that. He glanced over at him uneasily, but Maury paid him no attention, giving him no insight on his thoughts on the matter. The younger man recalled his painting of her in bed with him, his father pointing.

He looked out the window and watched the town pass by, emptying his mind. As soon as he tried, a familiar craving wormed its way into his consciousness. He pushed it away for now. His father was right. Right now, he didn't want to know the future, but he still wanted the drugs. He shut his eyes and wished he could lean back against the seat. His back hurt too much for that, though. It occurred to him his father could take away that sensation of pain. Matt might be able to take it away himself if he applied himself to it. He didn't, nor did he ask. He felt he deserved it.

Instead, he turned back to a question he'd asked earlier. "How many zombies have you made?"

Maury shrugged. "Why do you assume I've made any at all?"

"You knew what he was right away. There can't be so many telepaths out there that it's common."

"Nah, that's not a good reason. You can make zombies using all sorts of abilities. Just about anything that burns out a person's mind will… _can_ make one. But to answer your question, three."

"Three?"

"Yep. First one I tortured to death. The second was self-defense, at least to begin with. I got him down and left, thinking he'd die pretty soon. I'd been shot a couple times and couldn't stick around, but he didn't die and instead he got hauled off and there were complications… it's a long story. The last was because I was a sick puppy. It was revenge." He paused for a moment. "Pretty much the same thing as the first one, but with the first one that was revenge on the bastard I was doing it to. The last one was revenge on the bastard who cared about her."

"Oh." Matt wondered what Maury had done with his life. There was so much of it he didn't know. Nearly all of it, in fact. Children so rarely really understood their parents. Matt wasn't sure he wanted to even now. Obviously, his father had killed and tortured and done horrible things in his life and that was only on this one subject. Matt didn't ask to know more. He was afraid Maury would tell him, as blunt and matter-of-fact as he just had.

After they'd picked up Maury's bags and gone shopping, his father asked him, "About that painting you thought about earlier… I didn't see any paintings where you were staying. Where is that painting?"

Matt frowned at him and looked out the window, thinking his father wanted to see his future. _Hypocritical of him, but what did I expect?_ He shook his head. "They're at my apartment. It's close to here." He gave directions.

Maury looked around the place. It was crowded and tight, stinking of paint, half-eaten food and worse things, but it was also a treasure trove. There were over a hundred paintings here, maybe two or three hundred. He flipped through a stack set against one wall while Matt sat on his painter's stool, leaning forward.

"What are you going to do with these?" his father asked with a sense of wonder.

Matt shrugged. He was looking at his injection set and heroin sitting out in front of him, ready at hand for whenever he came here. His feelings about the drugs were complex. He wasn't particularly trying to sort them out, he was just staring at the equipment.

When he didn't answer, Maury went on, "Can I have them? Do you care about them?"

Matt looked up at him briefly. "There's only a few about you." He went back to staring at the heroin.

"I don't give a shit about the ones about _**me**_!" His father sounded angry again. Matt's brow furrowed and he started actually paying attention to him. Maury's eyes caught on the eclipse. "Again?" he muttered. "Do you have more on this?" He pointed excitedly at the image.

Matt shook his head and said slowly, "No, I don't think so. I have one of some stars over there…"

"Stars? Huh. Matt, can I have these? Can I send them to the Company to be analyzed, for storage?"

The younger man looked around the room blankly, unsure of why Maury cared. He could always make more. "Most of these just involve me, things I was going to do, things I've already done. A lot of them are already past, just small stuff, you know? Lives I tried to save, accidents, that sort of stuff. Why would the Company want that?"

Maury exhaled and shook his head, muttering, "Youth. Youth and stupidity." He spoke more loudly, "Fine, Matt. It's a bunch of useless old paintings you don't want anymore. Can I _please_ have them, since, like you say, like you're thinking right now, they're not worth anything to anyone?"

Matt shrugged. "Sure."

Maury whipped out his cell phone immediately and started dialing. His son looked at that, then gazed around at the paintings, wondering what it was Maury saw in them that was **that** important. He didn't explain, but the same truck that had taken away Ryan's body would be there within the hour with a packing crew. Matt had had a painter's block for the last couple weeks about events beyond his father's appearance. His father's arrival had been depressing, perplexing and frightening to him, so after a while he'd stopped painting. He looked at the eclipse and watched as his father struggled to figure out how to get his cell phone to take a picture of it. He finally managed it.

They left, leaving the door unlocked for the movers. Matt turned to his father in the car and said, "What did you think of that painting on the wall? You seem to think all those things I drew meant something. What did that one mean?"

Maury was tempted to imagine he meant the eclipse, but he could see Matt was asking about the regression painting. "You were mired in painting, lost in it, caught in a pointless loop of doing the same thing over and over for as far as you could see in the future."

Matt's mouth dropped open slightly, then he caught himself and shut it. "It… I… It wasn't pointless!"

His father shrugged. "Okay," he said agreeably.

Matt snorted. His father was acting like he was agreeing only to agree, not because he believed it. "My life has not been **pointless**!"

"I said okay."

"Well it hasn't been!" Matt was angry, getting angrier. It incensed him that his father didn't think much of what he'd been trying to do.

"Listen, don't get your panties in a wad there because I'm not bowing down and worshipping at the altar of the oracle Matthew Parkman, buddy-boy. Been there, done that and to a much nicer-looking oracle than yourself. If I didn't think what you'd done back there was important, what you could do with your ability was vital, then those paintings wouldn't be on their way as we speak."

He shook his head, recalling that Matt hadn't thought his paintings were important either. _What the hell are we arguing about here?_ He turned and looked at Matt for as long as he safely could while driving. It became clear Matt wanted him to care about what he'd done _because_ of the paintings, not about the paintings themselves. He supposed he could understand that. Being the man he was though, he didn't give his son any positive reinforcement for it.


	19. Meet the parent night

After a long silence as they drove, Maury said, "You know, that painting on the wall… It's the precognition that's eating you up. You've had telepathy for years and you haven't had this problem - going batshit crazy and killing yourself by inches. You had the precog too for a while, but it wasn't until you started triggering it intentionally, over and over, that you got into this mess."

Matt grunted. He didn't want to talk about it, didn't want to think about it. Most days, by now, he'd shot up. He was missing it, craving it. He couldn't help but think with every twinge from his back that he wouldn't care about that pain if he had something else to feel.

His father changed the subject, making Matt oddly grateful he'd let him read his mind. He could have simply told the man to change the subject, but it was somehow nicer to have someone know and just do it without having to be asked. "So," he asked his son, "Tell me about Patricia."

Matt ran through her life story as he knew it, replaying it slowly in his mind. It was far faster and more accurate than telling it. He could sense his father's awareness paying attention. They'd arrived back at the apartment before Matt was completely done. He'd told it chronologically, so Maury was still missing the last month as they carried groceries to the apartment.

She'd come back while they were out and stood up in surprise at seeing them. She'd been watching television. She turned it off and waited to be introduced. It was a long wait, as Matt couldn't figure out what to say to her and his father was no help. Maury put up food and left his son to sigh and shift his weight. He knew what she wanted to know - he just wasn't telling her.

Finally she asked, "Who is that?"

"That's… ah, that's my father."

She looked in at the other man speculatively, then back to Matt. She could see that things had changed, big time. Matt was acting deferential to the other man and guilty to her. Quite often they went whole conversations without speaking, with him living in her mind. She was unsure as to why he had withdrawn from her and was making her speak aloud the things she would rather ask him privately. It frightened her. Her mind jumped to the worst thing that could happen. "You're leaving me, aren't you?"

"Yes, eventually. I think so." He looked back at Maury, who was putting away the last of their purchases. His father gave him nothing - possibly, Matt thought, because he was telling the truth about it being Matt's choice and not his.

He sensed something from her, a threat, and turned back in time for her to struggle with hitting him, failing because he'd prevented her from hurting him early in their time together. He still jerked his head back at her abortive motion. She shook her head violently and said, "No! Noo! NOOO!" She hit herself across the face and Matt flinched, feeling a shadow of the blow from her mind, as she knew he would. She bared her teeth at him and then just as suddenly, calmed.

Matt glanced back at Maury, who was quietly folding one of the paper sacks the groceries had come in. He was watching, but Matt wasn't getting any sense from him that he was affecting her. He also wasn't preventing Matt from reading her, assuming he could. Matt wasn't sure - all Maury seemed to have done was make it impossible for Matt to act against him and make it possible for him to monitor him.

Matt walked over to her and put his hands on her face because he could, because his father wasn't stopping him. She didn't stop him either, but her eyes were angry. If he left, her whole life was going to fall apart - everything they'd built together would disappear without his ability to keep it going. He could feel her rage and sense of betrayal boiling dangerously in her head. He put his forehead to hers. She showed him, vividly, what she wanted to do to him for leaving her. He kissed her because he was sorry, sorry he'd come into her life in the first place and changed everything. He wasn't sure she'd survive his absence. She pulled her lips from his, daring him to force her. He let her go and stepped away. Matt had done a lot of things to her, but he'd never done that. It wasn't what he was.

She looked past him at his father. She smiled politely at him and asked with false cheer, "What's your name? I'm Patricia."

He nodded. "I'm Maury."

"Maury. That's an odd name." She thought it sounded like Mary or Maureen, both girls' names. He got that a lot. It didn't faze him, but it had a lot to do with naming his son Matthew. She looked back at Matt. "Where's Ryan?"

"He's gone," he said quietly.

"He's dead," his father supplied bluntly. "We got rid of him."

Both of them wheeled to him, Matt angry, Patty beginning to be afraid - not of Matt leaving, but of what might happen to her before he left.

"You…" Matt didn't know what to say.

Maury shrugged. "You've already told her so much, why dissemble now?"

She whipped around to face Matt, saying, "He's like _you_! _Just_ like you!" She meant his ability. Matt sighed and rolled his eyes. It was enough of an answer. She looked at his father with the hint of a smile. "There are others," she said softly, wondering if there was a way for her to get this ability or at least be a more permanent part of the family who had it. It wasn't just Matt anymore.

Maury walked out of the kitchen and skirted the dining room table on the far side. He looked at the first aid kit, which had been opened and left that way. The contents were in disarray - she'd pawed through them. All of the hard drugs had been removed from it. He glanced at the list of contents posted on the inside of the lid to make sure, then touched her mind for the information he wanted.

She threw back her head, trying to block him. Not only was she sensitive to it, but she'd figured out a few things about resisting. His contact with her earlier had been so brief, he hadn't noticed. Now he tilted his head at her, but he didn't push. Matt was looking at him through slightly narrowed eyes, trying to work out what he could do to stop his father without setting off the feedback loop. Maury found it amusing the man hadn't considered hitting him yet. _Well, there's no reason to point that out._

He addressed the woman, saying, "I want all the drugs back in here tonight. We might need this stuff later. Take a look at Matt's back for me, if he'll let you. I need to go back out and get an air mattress, a few other things." He looked at his son for a moment, then left.

The mental link faded over distance until Maury couldn't feel it at all. The only thing he'd sense through it at this distance was death or an extreme emotional spike. Matt was very strong, but his father didn't know if that would enhance or suppress the link. He bought his supplies and stopped by the local Company offices, making sure the paintings and Ryan's corpse had been taken care of appropriately.

Back at the apartment, Matt sat on the couch and said nothing. He was thinking about getting high. Patty paced. "When?"

He looked up at her blankly. He hadn't been listening to her. "What?"

"I said when are you leaving? I want to know. It's kind of important to me, you know?"

He sighed. "I don't know. Go get all those drugs you took out of that box and put them back."

"Why? Because some old man told you to?"

"Yeah." He didn't say anything else. He was wishing that old man was here to keep him from using. He wanted to shoot up almost desperately.

"You… Do you have to do what he says?"

Matt frowned, still looking at the floor. "Sort of."

"He… can do to you… what you can do to everyone else?"

Matt frowned at her, looking up at her. The younger Parkman was suddenly less interesting to her if he was someone else's pawn. Matt's shoulders slumped. He put his hands over his face. He hadn't ever thought she loved _him_. It had always been about his ability and what he could do for her. He wasn't _that _deluded, but he'd thought she might love him for himself, eventually. He hadn't thought she'd dump him to chase after his father, for Christ's sake. The man was old enough to be her grandfather.

Matt chuckled, remembering the painting and snatches of waking future-sight where she tried to seduce Maury and ended up in bed with Matt. Served her right and his father too. He'd just let that little scene play itself out. She'd be rebuffed and then she'd come crawling back to him and something about it would restore his feelings for her. He still couldn't work out the details, but that was normal enough.

"What's so funny?" she demanded.

He shook his head. "All of this. I'm sorry. Could you look at my back though? It really hurts." He unbuttoned his shirt and shrugged out of it with as little movement as possible. Nearly all his clothes were far too big for him, so it wasn't much of a problem.

"Oh my… What… what happened to you?" She was genuinely concerned, but given what he'd read off her only a few moments before, he was disgruntled to hear her sympathy. He'd learned that her emotions shifted back and forth rapidly. She was passionate about things and felt nearly everything more strongly than he'd like. Her feelings were also disturbingly transient and what she felt one moment might fade and shift to something else entirely more quickly than he could follow. She surprised him more often than he thought a telepath should be caught off guard, but it wasn't calculated on her part.

"Dad wasn't happy with me. Just don't ask any more questions, would you? Go get whatever out of that first aid kit and make it hurt less."

The cure didn't hurt nearly as bad as the affliction, but it still hurt like hell.


	20. The other shoe drops

Maury came back to the apartment with two agents and a full tank of caution. Matt had had a couple hours to have a change of heart and want his old man dead, plenty of time to arrange what he needed for it. Hell, all he had to do was get his gun out. Maury waited outside for nearly ten minutes, feeling his way around the very edges of Matt's consciousness. He was in there, awake and it seemed, not drugged. After his emotions stayed calm for most of that time, Maury moved in to wait outside the front door.

By now the agents had confirmed with infrared sensors that there were only two people inside, both fitting the height/weight ranges for Matt and Patty. The television was on a game show. There was no conversation going on. He waited another very long ten minutes, during which Matt and Patty had an exchange about Matt's car, with her demanding that he leave it behind and him being vague in reply. Matt's thoughts weren't focused on much of anything other than how much he wanted to hit up. He still hadn't, which made Maury happy. He slipped the earpiece into his pocket and prepared to go in.

The elder Parkman tried the door very carefully; he was aware it was visible from the living room. They hadn't locked it, so he opened it and went inside like he had a right to be there. The pair was sitting on opposite ends of the couch, watching TV. They looked up at him as he carried his duffel bag to the other bedroom without comment. He tossed it on the futon and went back out to his car, getting the sack that held the inflatable mattress. He sent off the agents with a signal. All was good. They would park a surveillance van down the street just in case.

Dinner was awkward, full of long silences and thwarted conversations. Patty kept trying to engage Maury, who ignored her but didn't use his ability to shut her up. Neither did Matt, who ate very little. He was feeling nauseous - not sure if it was caused by his back, the stress of the day, or quitting cold turkey, but he felt sick regardless.

He wanted to go to bed afterwards, but Maury got out a notebook and started grilling him about everyone he'd worked on and what he'd done to them. Patty sat by silently, listening, sullen. Matt didn't talk about the many people he'd been at she didn't know of. Anything she didn't already know about, he projected mentally. Maury didn't comment on the subterfuge - he just cooperated with it.

As the evening wore on, Matt's temper got shorter despite his best attempts to stay cool. His father pushed him nearly to the breaking point, backing off presciently just short of it. By mutual assent, they turned in for the night. Matt took three different kinds of over the counter painkillers and was relieved when his father didn't object. Apparently 'no drugs' meant nothing psychotropic.

While Maury was fiddling with the inflation of his mattress, Patricia was trying to be intimate with Matt. He refused her. He hurt all over, craved something she wasn't giving him and he felt horrible about himself. Ryan's death played fitfully behind his eyes. It was about as unsexy as he'd felt in his life and he'd had some doozies.

He could tell she was insecure and afraid. She'd tried to talk to Maury and gotten nowhere, so now she was back at Matt, begging for his attention, trying to find a way to salvage things for herself. He finally told her to fuck off. She had no idea how he was feeling and he had no intention of sharing with her. She lay unmoving, fuming, on her side of the bed for nearly an hour, finally getting up to go try to sleep on the couch. Matt drifted off soon thereafter.

He woke to find her back next to him, being amorous yet again. It was morning. He didn't feel appreciably better and his temper was still short. He told her, "Would you get the fuck away from me?!" and shoved her roughly from where she was trying to encourage him to roll over onto his back. She slapped at him. She wasn't prohibited from touching him, just from harming him. What had slipped her mind was how much his back hurt. She didn't remember that until after her palm had struck the injured flesh.

Matt yelled inarticulately at the sudden pain and jumped up, trying to hit her. She dodged out of the way, eyes flashing. "Serves you right!" she yelled back at him. In his sleep-addled, surprised state, he imagined his father must have undone his commands to her. He hadn't mentioned her specifically last night, but they were planning to approach everyone.

When he couldn't get to her physically, he reached out mentally and dropped her to the ground with a torture of fire. It had hardly begun when his father's voice rang in him mind, _Stop that, Matthew. Let her go._ He struggled against the command for a moment, only to have it reinforced.

_Get out of my head! Get out! Leave! You can't do this to me!_ His concentration faltered on Patty, who crawled to the nearest corner and cowered. Matt gave up on trying to hurt her further and focused on his father, trying to pry out the link by main force. He became the one who felt like he was on fire. He fell to his knees, then down on his hands too, head down as he tried to force it out with everything he had. The world went searing white and nothing existed except the pain. Then all was black.

He woke up to his father wiping his face with a wet towel, cleaning off the blood that had come from his sinuses. Matt shoved him away in an ill temper, then snatched the towel from him and pressed it to his aching forehead. He was laying on the floor, not in nearly as much agony as he had been before he passed out, but still in so much pain he could hardly move. The air itself was a burden and an irritant. Maury stood up and walked away.

"Get out," Matt groaned. His father didn't reply. After several minutes Matt gained his feet, but his head felt like it was going to fall off or explode – or both - at any moment. He staggered into the living room to see breakfast being put on the table. "**GET OUT!**" he shouted. Stars danced at the edges of his vision. If he hadn't been clinging to the wall already he'd have fallen.

He lunged towards the table with the intention of overturning it, only to have Maury tell him, _Stay out of the dining room_.

It pulled Matt up short at the threshold. He held the towel to the side of his head, unbothered by his nakedness for now. "You said you wouldn't command me!"

"I never said that," his father said calmly, pouring orange juice into three glasses.

"You said you'd leave if I told you to!"

"And I might. I made breakfast. I'm going to eat it."

"I want you to get out **NOW**," Matt said between clenched teeth.

The older man shrugged for reply. Impotent, shaking, Matt went to the couch and sat down, where he rocked slowly, holding his head.

A few minutes passed, broken only by the sound of Maury putting out a few last items and then calling, "Patty? There's breakfast if you want it." Mentally he told his son, _If you promise to behave yourself I'll let you come eat… after you put some clothes on._

_Go fuck yourself,_ Matt thought to him. Even that simple projection gave him a twinge of pain. He glared at his father, suddenly angry that Patty might share a meal with him while he did not. That the food smelled great only made him madder. He rose when she came out and pointed at her, "Get back in the room! Stay away from him. We're not eating with him."

She glanced between the two of them and went. Maury frowned disapprovingly at his son, but said nothing. He scooped eggs and bacon onto his plate silently and sat down to eat alone. Matt stalked into his bedroom to get dressed.

While he did, he caught snatches of thought from Patty, who sat on the edge of the bed and said nothing. As Matt pulled on his pants and fastened them, he realized she was thinking about something that hadn't happened. He walked closer, trying to read her more clearly. His head hurt too much for it, so he put his hand on her forehead. She pulled away, not aware his ability was clouded by pain, though it probably wouldn't have mattered if she did. He'd never had to touch her to use it before. He slapped her hard across the face in a moment of pique. "Hold still, dammit."

For a moment, he dared his father to interfere, but he couldn't even tell if the man was aware he was hurting her again, just not mentally this time. He grabbed Patty's head and forced his way into her mind, dredging out the memory he wanted. She was crying and shaking when he was done.

He knew he took his emotional state with him when he entered the minds of others – he just didn't care. His ability was still severely taxed by fighting the link earlier. He felt weak and light-headed from the additional exertion, then nauseous. He rushed to the bathroom and vomited in the toilet. As he knelt next to it, he tried to sort out what he'd seen.

She'd had sex last night. He was sure it hadn't been with him, but it looked like him in her memory. She'd been very satisfied by it, thrilled by his attention, his careful, loving attention to every detail of her pleasure. Matt shut it out. There was only one explanation. She'd gone to Maury, but he hadn't rebuffed her, he hadn't rejected her. Matt had been wrong.

Maury must have had sex with her, or made her think Matt did while he almost certainly watched her thoughts if he didn't give them to her entire. To Matt at that moment, that seemed just as bad. He'd been cheated on - again. The vision Matt had seen had not played out as he expected. There was one obvious solution to all his problems at the moment.

He left the bathroom and walked to his nightstand, getting out one of his many guns. This one was always loaded. He cocked it and took off the safety. He turned to go out, intending to get rid of his father forever. He stumbled and the whole world narrowed, closed in on him. His nightmare began to overwhelm him.

He was thirteen again and his father stood over him, but instead of giving him money and a pat on the head, a warped, distorted, and much older version of the man, as old as he was now in reality, looked down on him. "Matthew," he smiled cruelly despite his somewhat kind words. "I tried to be nice about this, I really did, because you're my son. But apparently the ties that bind aren't as tight as I'd hoped. I'll have to use other ties now, because I'm not going to let you kill me."

Matt looked down to see a huge gun in his small, early teen hand. He dropped it in surprise, unsure of how it got there. It vanished as it fell.

His father said, "You seem to think it's acceptable to dish out pain and commands to the people closest to you just because you can, because you can get away with it. If that's how morality works, then thank you for explaining it to me. I'd missed that part. I guess I just need to work a little harder on being an upright, moral guy in your lights, since that's so important to you. Let's start with your old favorites: _You will tell me the truth and you will not conceal or omit the truth from me. You will do what I tell you to do. You will not harm me or allow me to be harmed. You will protect me. You will help me._ And I'll add one of my own - _You will help yourself and you will not hurt yourself_, to be applied when it doesn't conflict with any of my other commands to you."

It ended. Matt was bowed over on the floor again, on his knees. The gun lay before him. He reached for it, but he couldn't pick it up, couldn't move it. He could only touch it. He knew he wanted to pick it up and shoot his father, but he couldn't do it. He looked over at Patricia, who had a red mark on the side of her face where he'd hit her. She was watching him fearfully. He wanted to tell her to take the gun and shoot Maury, but that was impossible too. If he hadn't been prohibited from it, at that moment, he might have picked up the gun and shot himself.


	21. Not just an assignment

**A/N: I do not endorse the views Maury Parkman puts forward. I think it should be clear from other things I've written of him in this AU that he's on the darker end of the moral spectrum. As far as that goes, I don't endorse Matt's views either, or Patty's, or those various drug dealers I've written about… or… well, pretty much everyone has something I'd object to on a moral basis. Maybe not Peter in the show, but Peter in my fics is still quite human. Just because my characters put forward a certain view of the world doesn't mean I share it or agree with it. It just means I think some people have that point of view.**

Minutes passed, perhaps a quarter of an hour. Patty got up and scurried out of the room, thinking she needed to try again to curry favor with the top dog. Maury brushed her off yet again and directed her to eat. He called out, verbally, "Matt? If you want breakfast, please come get it. I'm going to throw it out if you don't."

The younger man considered telling him to go screw himself again, but oddly he flashed to his memory of waiting for Ryan get himself a donut when he was hungry. His shoulders slumped. His father was picking his words carefully, not telling him he had to eat, just telling him it was there if he wanted it. If he was any smarter than Ryan, any better than him, then he'd get up and go help himself to food.

He got up and grabbed a shirt with a wince and walked out, putting it on. His father stood and spooned the last of the scrambled eggs onto his plate, then added the last of the bacon. He looked at his son, meeting his eyes for a long moment. Matt looked away. There was nothing he could think to do against him. He was enslaved as thoroughly as anyone Matt had ever worked over. He pulled out the chair and sat down. He fiddled with his fork, then ate. The food had grown cold, but it was still fairly good.

Maury took away the serving dish and his own plate, rinsing them and stacking them next to the sink. He came out and picked up the folder he'd taken notes in the night before. He looked across the table at Patricia and said, "Patricia – do you want to make me happy?"

She smiled hesitantly, then more broadly, thinking she was going to get the chance she wanted. "Yes, of course."

"Good. Wash the dishes when everyone's done, then clean the place up. Matt and I have some business to see to today." His tone changed slightly. "You are to spend the day here and not call anyone, don't communicate with anyone in any way until I tell you to. Do you understand that?"

With the way she blinked, jerked her head to the side, then bobbed and nodded agreeably, Matt could tell his father was ordering her, at least with the last part of what he'd said. Matt frowned and finished his food, not bothering to object even though he wanted to. He couldn't see what he'd object to anyway. It was only common sense.

Patty had figured out from the night before that Maury was intent on dismantling their criminal organization, taking out all the carefully structured links between people that culminated in everyone doing what she and Matt told them to do. She wasn't stupid and she was wildly power-hungry. His father had correctly deduced that she wouldn't sit idly by while they ruined her.

She looked between the two men, frustrated but desperate. "Could I help you, somehow? Can I go _with_ you?" Both of them knew she was talking about when they departed for good, not simply today's expedition. Maury sucked at his teeth and stuck his hand out for her plate, as she'd just finished. She handed it over but didn't let go. "Answer me, please?" She looked at Matt and said, "He needs me."

Maury tugged the plate away from her with a jerk and snorted. "That's the last thing he needs. You take care of the house. I'll see what I can do for you." He said the last grudgingly, but he said it.

She watched his back warily as he walked into the kitchen and rinsed it. After thinking it over for a little while, he added, "You'll be fine when we leave here, as long as you don't get in my way. I don't have a lot of patience for that sort of thing. Never have."

He stacked the plate and walked back out. "Speaking of which, if you interfere with my son too much, I'll count that as getting in my way. Making him miserable is my job, not yours. **Your** job is to make him happy." He glanced at Matt, then back to her, "Though that might not be possible at the moment."

Patty was silent as Matt finished his meal and carried the plate in on his own to clean it, ignoring his father's outstretched hand. He got his shoes and socks on. They left.

-----

After they got in the car, Matt said, "I would have thought you'd of said something to me by now about hitting her."

Maury shrugged. "What woman doesn't deserve to be knocked around a little? It's when you get carried away that's a problem. People get all excited about domestic violence these days like folks will shatter and break if you hit them once or twice. That's stupid. Same goes for kids. Every kid needs a good beating now and then so they remember who's the parent and who's the child."

Matt blinked at his father and tried very hard, but unsuccessfully, to keep his disapproval to himself about the blatant misogyny and endorsement of child abuse.

Maury laughed at him. "Yeah, you think that now. Friend of mine used to say the only excuse for child abuse is children." He grinned at Matt. "I always thought that one was particularly funny."

Matt exhaled tightly, tense. "Yeah, because you were such a wonderful role model, such a great father. Your son just adores you, you know?" he finished sarcastically, bringing his hate together.

"Clearly he does, since he grew up to be just like me," the older man said quietly.

Matt's righteous fury deflated like a balloon with a pin stuck in it. Matt heaved in deep breaths, looking out the window as they drove. "That's low. That's low, Pop."

"But true. Sadly true. You wouldn't have been hitting her if you didn't agree, now would you? You wouldn't have left your kid if you didn't think it was a good idea, for the best. Reasons not too far different from my own, in fact. You'll do better with your own kind, some people who can beat some fear and respect into you if you get over the line. Everyone does.

"They won't admit it in this current pansy-fied society we got going, but I know what's in people's heads and so do you. They're vicious, mean and nasty, every one of them. Even the good ones are only that way to thwart their own baser natures. I've met some good people, took a look at them, out of curiosity, you see. They're just as bad inside, just more scared of it than most folks. Doesn't mean they're not nicer to be around than the other lot, but it doesn't mean they're pure either."

He fell silent, shaking his head. His son had stopped listening to him anyway and Maury let himself be ignored. Matt looked out the window and watched the scenery flow by as they headed to the marina. Jay wasn't making a pickup today, but he would be coming back from a dawn fishing tour fairly soon, then he'd fuel up, clean the ship, grab lunch, round up some more customers and head back out for the early afternoon. If the crowds were really big, then he might make a sunset tour too, but those usually only happened on weekends. Today was Tuesday.

It occurred to Matt his father had started at the beginning of the workweek. Dully he asked, "Am I just an assignment to you?"

"You're an assignment, but you're not **just** an assignment."

Matt frowned at him a couple times, then went back to looking out the window as he sat forward and slightly hunched in the chair. His back still hurt. "Why does the Company want me?"

His father was silent for a while, thinking about the vision Angela had revealed to him that either he or Matt would die within a year. Hopefully there was something in Matt's paintings that would shed light on which of them would go. He had no intention of ever telling his son the real reason he wanted him – which was to save his own hide. There was also a chance he wanted to use this last opportunity to reunite with him and share some sort of familial ties, achieve some kind of understanding in these last days, regardless of which of them went. Maury wasn't sure if he really felt that way, or just wanted to. It seemed a little sissy either way, and that made him uncomfortable.

Finally he said brusquely, "The Company can always use more telepaths, just like we can always use more precogs and bookies, more influencers and controllers. What we don't need are energy projectors and that sort of crap. Useless lot of powers. Annoying as hell."

"I thought the Company had been dismantled."

"Yeah. You thought I was dead, too."

Matt looked back at him. "Yeah. How did that work, anyway? Did you make everyone there think Arthur had killed you? That had to take some pretty fast thinking."

"Hrm, no. I made Daphne think everyone was there and played her through the whole scene, including my 'death'. Arthur told me what he wanted her to know, just like all the other stuff I put in her head. If Arthur was going to kill me, he wouldn't do it _that_ way."

"Why did he want me to think you were dead, that he'd had you killed?"

"I don't understand all of Arthur's plans. The ones I do understand, I don't like much. Here – there's a parking spot right there!" Matt didn't notice Maury spoke about Arthur in the present tense. They'd arrived at the marina and parked near the same donut shop that Ryan and Matt had eaten at. The morning crowd had thinned out and Maury pulled into a good spot close to the piers. The boat, ship, whatever, would pull up to it soon, if Jay was on his usual schedule.

They walked down the boardwalk towards the end of the pier. Matt glanced around at the screeching of gulls and children, the sunlight bouncing off the water, the brisk breeze blowing in from the ocean. It was July with all that brought. He said, "This is a terrible place to use your ability, Dad."

"I know. But I don't have to. You've already used yours. You make him go in the cabin and then we'll shut the door and sort him out together. You do it - I'll ride along and make sure you're thorough."

"Me? Why me? You're the one who wants to change everything."

Maury reached over and put a hand on Matt's shoulder. Matt jumped at the flash of mental intensity that came with it. Maury's features twitched and he jerked his hand back like he'd been shocked. "You're the one who _did it_, Matt," he said in a low voice, going on like the feedback wasn't as surprising to Maury as it was to his son. "You don't get to walk away from this one. You're going to clean up your mess one piece at a time."

Matt grunted. "What about at the end, after everything's gone and he's on his own?"

Maury smiled at him. "Well then, that's when you'll see how he really feels about you, won't you? He won't be able to make sense of why he did what you told him to do, but he'll know it wasn't what he would have normally done. These are the people you thought of as your family, Matt. What possible fear would you have of them?" He gave him a predatory grin, all teeth.

He smirked at his son and leaned in close. Matt leaned away but Maury grabbed his arm and pulled him closer. This time there wasn't any feedback. "I want you to listen to every one of them, every person you turned and changed and convinced yourself they actually liked you once they got to know you. You were living in a fantasy world, Matthew, and if there's one thing I can't abide, it's lying to yourself. You listen to me, because this is an order: I want you to listen to their thoughts after we take out the commands. See how they feel about you when they aren't compelled to love you, to like you."

Matt jerked away from him as soon as it seemed he was done. "What good would that do anyone, Pop?" he said coldly.

"I don't know, but I hope it will make you think twice about making the same mistakes after I'm gone. I might not always be here to pull your fat out of the fire and make you walk what passes as the straight and narrow path among our kind." He chuckled darkly. "Besides, I've always, _**always**_ loved to see someone get their comeuppance. Don't deny an old man his little pleasures, Matthew." He smirked at him again and smiled with a bit of sadistic glee.

**A/N #2: Please review.**


	22. Packing up

**A/N: This was originally going to be the end, but I've added a couple chapters since then, so there are three more after this.**

Maury Parkman was a hard man. He liked Clint Eastwood, John Wayne and westerns. When Matt figured out the key to dealing with him was to avoid engaging him emotionally, things went much better between them. It didn't matter that Maury knew Matt's feelings. What mattered was that Matt kept up a stoic face and didn't make an issue of it.

Maury would get downright sadistic in grinding someone into the ground if they asked him for mercy or sympathy. Matt felt lucky to have learned that one by observation, not direct experience, but Matt was not the personality himself to ask for someone to lighten up – not on his behalf, at least. His father was rough on him, but he had a goal and he was rough on anyone who got in his way.

Two weeks had passed and Matt was packing up his things to go to New York. He was sitting in the living room folding freshly laundered clothes, putting them directly in shipping boxes. Patty had been recruited into the Company and had left for formal training the week before, taking all of her personal things with her when she went.

It had been a grueling fortnight. Matt wasn't sure what the worst part was – kicking the drugs and suffering withdrawal, being abused by his father, or realizing the degree to which he'd ruined his life. He was feeling better though. He was eating better, sleeping better and had stopped fighting what was happening. He was starting to see how all of this would help him.

Maury was sorting through a stack of files he'd had delivered to him, making sure they hadn't missed anyone, at least on paper. He made notes in some of them. Matt still didn't understand why the old man thought he needed to put El's drug ring back the way it was. They could have just dismantled it altogether. Matt's ideas of how society should be structured didn't hold much weight with his father.

"That's one assignment done." Maury stood up and put about a third of his files into a Primatech paper box. He sat back down, sighing heavily. "And now to start the next one." He picked up a cover letter and scanned over it, then sorted through the files as if making sure everything was there. "Huh. I need more agents if she expects me to be able to do this. Or maybe I could get you to help out." He looked over at Matt. "What languages do you speak?"

"English, a little Spanish, a few words of French. Why?"

"Looks like we're going somewhere. Hopefully all we'll need is English. I thought maybe while you were living with this guy…" He shrugged, set the letter down and opened the first file.

Matt's brow furrowed. "I thought we were going to New York."

"We are. For now." He closed the file and sorted through the others, pulling one out from near the bottom. He opened it on top of the others. It flopped a bit. Matt caught sight of a picture on it that looked familiar. He held his place for a moment. His father glanced up at him, sensing his curiosity. When the older man went back to reading, Matt took that as a sign it was okay to look closer.

He walked over and looked at Mohinder's photograph. He reached down and after another obligatory pause, pulled it sideways out of the paperclip that held it to the file. His father ignored him, so he looked down at the other files. The only names on them he recognized were Molly's and Mohinder's family. Matt frowned and set Mohinder's photo down in the middle of the table. He pulled out Chandra Suresh's file and opened it, sitting across from his father. Almost all of it was redacted. "This is useless! Why'd they black all this out?"

Maury extended a hand for it without looking up. Matt gave it to him. He looked through it briefly and then tossed it back on the stack and gave Matt Molly's file instead. "That's a restricted file. They send those for completion, so you know there's something out there, but they're not willing to tell you what it is. I can get the full version if we need it, but we probably don't. He's dead anyway."

Matt frowned and reached out for Chandra's file again. He paused with his hand on it for a second, then took it back when his father didn't object. He'd learned a few of his father's hot buttons over the previous two weeks. One of them was people taking things he considered 'his.' Matt opened it and looked at it more carefully, slowly reading what little wasn't marked out. There were a few interesting things, like dates and places, and references to reports archived at Primatech in Hartsdale. "Didn't Primatech burn down?"

"Uh-huh. Pinehearst too. Too bad we're self-insured. Treasury kind of took a big hit there."

"Did we lose all these files, these records this says were stored there?"

Maury shrugged. "Not my business. Not yours, either. Start reading that girl's file or go finish packing. I'm trying to work here."

Matt opened Molly's file. He couldn't focus on the words so he put his finger along the line, reading them slowly and carefully. He had a feeling of being watched and looked up to see his father staring at him with a very strange expression, almost sad. Maury told him brusquely, "Scratch that. Go finish packing."

Matt rolled his eyes and walked over, tossing clothes into the box angrily. They'd be wrinkled later, but he didn't care at the moment. He thought his father pitied him because of his dyslexia. He didn't want his pity. "I read fine, Dad. It just… takes me longer than most people."

"Yeah," his father said slowly. "You know what you tried to do with your son?"

Matt paused and looked at him, thinking about trying to get little Matty to say the word 'red.'

Maury went on, still looking down at the file he was ostensibly reading, "It doesn't work that way. I gave you your problem." He shook his head, looking up at him. "You can't make people _better_ with this ability we have, Matt, but you sure as hell can screw them up."

"You…" Matt didn't finish, even in his mind. Things half-remembered and disjointed from his early childhood flitted through his mind, but he couldn't focus on them, not even now. There was an answer there, or perhaps here, in what his father was saying.

"Yep. Me. I enrolled you in the program, thought it would help you out. I didn't want to be doing to other kids what I wouldn't do to my own. I didn't want to be a _hypocrite_." He closed the file, giving up the pretense of reading it. "It takes a long time to breed better people. Why wait when you can make them out of what you already have?" He shook his head. "That's what's been going on, you know? Next wave of the arms race."

He picked up Chandra's file and shook it at Matt. "This idiot with all his evolution crap. He never got the point – of course we didn't tell him - he thought it must be god or science or whatever bunk it was he believed in, coming from that shit hole country of his. All these people with powers didn't come out of nowhere, some evolutionary nonsense. It was purposeful. It was planned! It's still going on. We've gotten a lot better at it. It's working now, but we didn't know what we were doing when you were a kid, with Elle, with any of them. We tried too much, too fast, too direct."

Maury sighed and reached out and picked up Mohinder's photo, clipping it to the file again. Matt thought about Kassidy Singer and how she was far ahead of where a kindergartner should be. He thought about Mazy, whom her grandmother had said was given to them by the 'strange school' she went to. Maury smirked at him. "Yeah, that's not the Company, but it is _**us**_. We're not alone in this. Your longer term assignment's going to be in Boston, watching some government guys who are watching us."

Maury and Matt looked at each other for a long moment, while Maury considered telling Matt the truth about those 'government guys.' Finally the older man said, "Keep packing. We have a lot of work to do. Got to get the Walker System back online since Hana took out our satellite and the bag-and-tag's been taken off the menu. That was a tedious, dangerous, labor-intensive process anyway, so it's probably for the best. The satellite was a big problem though. It had a lot of other functions than tracking those guys."

He pointed at Matt and said, "I know this one matters to you, but I don't want to hear any crap out of you about it. It's important. It's part of something way bigger than you are. Suck it up and do your job and she'll be fine."

Matt sat back down and pulled out the clothes he'd tossed in without folding. He folded them quietly for a while, thinking about the past, thinking about Molly. His time with Mohinder wasn't something he'd ever wanted his father to know about. He was surprised the man had said nothing about it. Finally, unable to leave well enough alone, Matt asked, "What are you going to do about Mohinder?"

Maury shrugged. "That's why I'm reading his file."

"You should let me talk to him," Matt said quietly.

Maury grunted.

Matt folded more clothes for a while, until his father closed the file and reached out for the one Matt had been looking at earlier – Molly's. He skipped to the last pages, apparently familiar with the rest. Matt said, "He's not going to want to turn her over. He and I agreed we'd keep her out of the Company, keep her out of all this."

His father grunted again. Matt growled, annoyed by the one-way nature of their link. "What does that mean?"

"It means his wishes are immaterial. I have an assignment to get Molly Walker and take her to New York. I am going to get Molly Walker and take her to New York. That's the way I work. You're going to help me. If Chandra's boy is a problem, I'll make him not a problem. I never liked Chandra much anyway. Normal son of a bitch. Deserved what he got."

"What?"

"What?" Maury looked at Matt blankly for a moment, having failed to listen to his thoughts while reading and talking at the same time. He had his limits. After a moment, he said, "He was normal. No abilities. _And_ he was a son of bitch. He got nearly all his memories wiped. It improved him." The old man smirked in a moment of remembered pleasure.

Matt frowned. _Way to go, Dad, with the prejudice against normal people._

"Oh, stuff it. You believe it too or you wouldn't act like you do."

Matt snorted and said hotly, "If I believed it, I wouldn't have tried to make a life with Janice!" He clamped down on his emotions, but he'd slipped and he knew it.

His father glared at him. "And see where that got you."

He refused to let his father rile him further. It was the only way to avoid a fight he would definitely lose. In a calm, even tone, Matt said, "It got me a son… and we had good times together." He swallowed and focused on folding a shirt. "Not all relationships last anyway, no matter what kind of person they're with." His thoughts went to Mohinder for some reason. He had an ability now, but it hadn't made a difference.

"Point taken. Some of the most twisted people I know have abilities. A friend of mine had a theory it was some effect of power corrupting and absolute power corrupting absolutely. Basically, who's going to call you on your morality if you can crush them with a thought? Lends itself to a lot of experimentation if there's nothing really to stop you and you're already a freak by society's lights." Maury went back to reading. "Speaking of which, you lived with this guy."

"Yes," Matt said. He didn't need to elaborate. His thoughts did it for him.

Again though, his father didn't care what they'd done together. He stayed focused on business. "What sort of mental defenses did he have?"

"None." Matt finished the basket he'd been working on and started another, the last.

"Good. I'll just flip him and we'll take her. Shouldn't be too tough."

"I don't want you… messing with him."

Maury looked up at him for a long time. Quietly he said, "I do a good job, Matthew. I have a lot of experience with it. You're emotionally involved. One of us has to do it."

"It should be me. I can talk to him, work something out." Matt's chest was tight. He kept thinking about the painting of Mohinder bleeding to death on the floor. If he let his father handle things, it would get out of hand. Maybe if he did it, he could prevent it. "It's important to me."

Maury flipped Molly's file shut and took up that of Mohinder's mother. "It said there that he had enhanced strength. You know how well you control people after having your neck broken?" He paused for a moment and moved his neck as if it was stiff. "Not very well, trust me."

Matt laughed. "How would you know?"

"You think I've never been dead?" Maury chuckled, turning a page. "Kids these days," he muttered, smiling. Matt gave him a mystified look. There had been a reason why the founders had kept Adam locked up where they had easy access to him and his precious blood for thirty years, but Matt didn't know that. "My point is that if things go bad, they'll go bad fast and with his power you can be dead quicker than you can do anything about it."

"He wouldn't do that to me. Not as long as I don't use my powers on him."

"You think so, huh? Well, we'll see."

"You'll let me do it my way?" Matt was surprised.

"Sure. We'll do it your way, but you'd better like hell make it fast."

**A/N #2: This is the lead-up to Chapter 54, Unexpected Enemies, of Shattered Identity. That chapter starts with "Seven months ago", which puts it immediately following this chapter. (Well, there's a couple weeks in between, but who, other than me, is keeping a calendar for this fanfic? Anyone else with a super memory and anal time-sense will recall Nathan/Gabriel remarking in chapter 28 that Maury had teleconferenced in for the August board meeting. That's because he was in India at the time.)**

**Please, PLEASE, review. It means so much to me. It really does.**


	23. Villainy isn't all that bad

**A/N: This is largely taken from Shattered Identity, Chapter 54: Unexpected Enemies, though I've included the telepathic exchanges. Keep in mind they happen a bit faster than the spoken word. Oh, and as an aside, I think India is a perfectly good country. Maury clearly has some issues with it that arise from his past and won't be explored here. It goes back to stuff with Chandra.**

**Is it just me, or are there too many characters with names starting with M involved in this scene? (Matt, Mohinder, Molly, Maury, Mohinder's Mother… I should have had someone named Mark or Mike tag along with them.)**

Mohinder Suresh walked out on his patio, watching as two men walked up the wide, gravel-paved lane to his house. His features clouded with anger. Maury Parkman looked slightly different from the last time he'd seen him, but he still recognized him. He'd become almost entirely bald, lost weight and didn't carry himself quite as well. Mohinder had thought the man was dead, but the person who had told him of Maury's death was Matt himself, the other man walking up the drive. Matt too looked different - much lighter and with a cautious, furtive set to his features. The passage of time had been kind to neither of them. Obviously, Matt had lied to him.

When they were close enough to address, Mohinder called out angrily, "Stop there!"

The two men hesitated and glanced at one another. Matt thought, _Let me handle this._

_We're not having this discussion outside. The neighbors are too close. I can sense them,_ Maury projected back to him.

_Okay. Just let me handle it._

They continued up the path. Mohinder shook his head and stepped out in the middle of the path to his door. "Matt! Why did you bring **him** _**here**_? You didn't tell me he was coming! He can't be here!"

Matt looked guilty, which only made Mohinder more angry. They were also still walking and were now nearly to him. Matt paused and said, "Mohinder, I'm sorry. We've come for Molly." Maury hung back a few steps.

"Matt! You were the one who sent her here. To be safe, away from people like _**him**_!" Mohinder waved in a large gesture at Maury, who looked unimpressed.

_We can't have this argument outside, Matt. We're being noticed,_ his father thought to him.

Matt tried to ignore him. "Mohinder, I know. I'm **so** sorry. But I have to. We need her. I'll take care of her."

The Indian man's dark eyes flew wide. "**NO**," he said with every bit of emphasis he could muster.

_Fine, I'm going inside._ Maury rolled his eyes and walked forward, waving his hand dismissively at Mohinder. Suresh's perceptions were clouded and he felt a moment of confusion. By the time he fought it off, Maury had walked past him into his house.

_Hey_, Matt thought at his father's retreating back. _You said you'd leave him alone!_

_I hardly did anything to him. That doesn't count._

_It god damn well does count! __**Leave him alone**__._

Maury shut the door and didn't answer.

Mohinder blinked, looked behind himself at the closing door and then spun to look at Matt. Matt was shaking his head sadly. This was going about as badly as he'd expected it to go.

Mohinder rushed inside to find Maury standing in the living room, looking at the Indian man's mother. Matt followed, closing the door behind them, trying to think of how to defuse everything. Nothing came to mind at the moment. _I just need more time!_

Mohinder said, "Mother, get out of here. These men are dangerous. Get away from them!" He put himself between Maury and her, as she retreated to another room.

Maury cocked his head at Mohinder. "Now, now. All we want is the girl and we're not leaving until we have her. If you don't turn her over, I'll make you do it and you won't like what you are after I'm done with you. Do you understand me?"

"Dad, you said you wouldn't," Matt said quickly. He felt a surge of desperate fear as he realized the deal he'd begged for was about to be ignored as inconvenient. It wasn't the first time. _Dad?_

"No," Matt's father said, "**you** said you'd get him to cooperate. That was the agreement. If he doesn't cooperate, then I'll do whatever I need to get what we came for." _If you want to play good cop, bad cop, that's fine._

_That wasn't the plan…_ Matt looked at Mohinder, who was looking back and forth between the two men, trying to understand why Matt was doing whatever his father told him to do.

His father cut in, _The plan was you were going to handle him. He's not being handled. He could snap and kill one of us at any moment. He's already thinking about it and so is his mother._

_Okay, shut up and I'll handle it._ "Mohinder…"

The Indian man shook his head. "No, Matt. There's nothing you can say that will make me cooperate with sending Molly away with this man. Or you, as long as you're working with him."

The voice of Mohinder's mother cut across the room as she entered, carrying a large gun Mohinder hadn't known they owned. She pointed it at Maury, just past her son and said, "No, we do not need to cooperate with you. You will leave our house and never come back!"

Matt gaped at her, uncertain of what to do.

His father was less reluctant to act. _Goddammit. I am __**not**__ getting shot in this god-forsaken shit hole._ Maury sighed and stepped to the side. He raised a hand and the woman's aim shifted, solving both of Maury's problems at once. She fired, her bullets unerringly striking her son in the chest and side. A gun of that caliber should have knocked him to the ground with a single shot, but Mohinder stood against the impacts. He would have been better off to have fallen immediately.

"**NO!**" Matt leaped forward towards Mohinder and threw himself between the mother and son, but it was too late. The painting had become reality, he was sure. Mohinder shrugged Matt off easily, his strength undiminished even if he was bleeding to death. He surged towards Maury and knocked him back against the wall, grabbing his neck, intending to end him if it was the last thing he did.

_Fuck!_ Maury thought and Matt felt his power leap to Mohinder's mother, delivering a last order.

"Hen, no!" Something about the terrified tone of Matt's voice and his use of his pet name for him made the man look back before he did it. His mother stood with the gun barrel under her chin, prepared to fire.

Maury whispered in his ear, "I'm the only thing keeping her from firing. If you kill me, she'll pull the trigger. Let **me** go, and I'll let **her** go." He was strangely calm, knowing he'd have revenge if the other man broke his neck.

Mohinder shook, feeling his life blood draining from him, shock threatening his consciousness. His opportunity was slipping away… or perhaps it was already gone.

Matt projected, his thoughts in anguish, _Why? Why didn't you just make her drop the gun? Why did you make her shoot him?_

_You won't let me touch him mentally, so what does that leave?_ Exasperation colored the elder Parkman's tone._ He'd have attacked me as soon as he realized I had her._

_There had to be another way!_

_Maybe there was, but I only had like half a second to think of something while you stood there with your thumb up your ass._

The Indian staggered from the older man, collapsing to the floor. Maury carefully stepped around him, out of his reach. To Matt, he said, "He's all yours." He stepped in front of Mohinder's mother, who handed him the gun. She turned, expressionless as an automaton, and led him to Molly.

Matt crouched next to Mohinder and put pressure over the worst of his gunshot wounds. The injured man's arm shot upwards and grabbed Matt by the throat. Matt choked, unable to speak. Into the mind of the person he'd once been closer to than a mere friend, he thought, _Let me go. Let me go, you moron! I'm trying to save your life!_

Mohinder answered him, snarling, _I don't want to live! Not if this is what it has become! I am not safe even in my parent's house, not even in my own mind. I won't let you be a part of Molly's life. I won't let you become like your father._

_Mohinder… no!_ Matt felt his awareness fading, his vision dimming. He could see, very clearly in the other man's mind that he was going to kill Matt. There would be no release on his grip when he fell unconscious. If he didn't stop him, Matt would die by his hands. Mentally, he compelled him, _Let me go_, and broke one of the cardinal rules of their previous friendship.

Mohinder's fingers fell away lifelessly, but his eyes burned with hate. "I will find you, and I will kill you. I'm too late - you're already like your father." He coughed up blood.

Matt slumped limply, his heart seared to the core. He couldn't let Mohinder follow them. If he survived the gunshot wounds and pursued them, he'd only die somewhere else and who knew who he'd kill before he was taken down. The Company had too many resources and Molly was too important for them to let Mohinder take her.

He knew what he had to do – he just wished it wasn't so easy. He'd had so much practice in the last few weeks writing himself out of people's lives, making them not care and forget. For Mohinder he'd have to go deeper - the man had genuine feelings for him and Molly. To make Mohinder give up on people he loved, Matt would have to make him give up on himself. Matt twisted him so he would never try to save Molly or anyone like her.

He was dimly aware of Maury standing behind him with his hand on Molly's shoulder. She watched Mohinder's bleeding body twitch as the hate in his eyes faded into dullness. She knew what Matt was doing to him, at least in a general way. Tears rolled down her cheeks, but she said nothing. There was nothing she could do to save either of them.

Matt stood and told Maury, "It's done. He won't come after us."

Maury looked at him and marveled that Matt could accomplish something like that in seconds. It would have taken the older man minutes, at least. He shrugged. "Hardly a point. He's going to bleed to death anyway." He started to the front door.

"No, he won't. Where did you leave his mother?" Matt looked around the room. It did not strike him as odd that he spoke to his father about other people like they were objects to be put somewhere and expected to stay there unless moved by an outside force. Molly stared over her shoulder at him with wide eyes. How could this be the same man whom she'd seen as her hero? How had he become so corrupted, so twisted? Maury's hand tightened fractionally on her shoulder. She was reminded he could see her thoughts… and so could Matt, who gave her a look so cold and distant she retreated within herself and silenced even her mind.

Maury waved dismissively towards the back of the house and walked out with Molly. "Back there," he called back, "Don't take too long. I won't wait."

Matt hurried to find Mohinder's mother, who was sitting on Molly's bed, looking stunned and holding the gun in her hand. He put the gun aside and grabbed her hand to lead her to her son's side. He looked into her mind and undid the veil his father had put over her senses, countermanding and removing the suggestion she kill herself after having killed her son. He imparted to her what he knew of first aid, what needed to be done. He took from her how to contact emergency services. He left her putting pressure on Mohinder's chest and he dialed for help, reporting the injury. Hopefully it would be enough.

He walked to the door and hesitated. His friend's mother sobbed over his body, begging him not to die. Matt shut his eyes for a moment, torn. He could hear her thoughts as plainly as her voice and they rent his heart. It was almost as bad as seeing what Molly thought of him. This was what he was now and there was nothing he could do about it. He wasn't a hero anymore, he was a villain. He stood up straighter and took a deep breath, coming to terms with himself. Outside, the engine of their rental car roared to life. He felt a now-familiar tug at his consciousness from his father. It was time to go.


	24. Coming to America

Matt's heart became heavier with every step he took on the way back to the car. He hesitated next to it. He wanted to get in the back next to Molly, but her terrified eyes told him that wasn't a good idea. Gingerly he opened the passenger door, trying not to get too much blood on the handle, and got in next to his father. Maury put the car into drive and got them out of there before the authorities could show up.

Matt sat with his hands on his knees, palms up. They were covered in Mohinder's drying blood. He stared at them, but he hardly saw them. His mind kept playing in a loop, seeing Mohinder bleeding around his fingers as he tried to staunch the flow, seeing Mohinder's face as the other man tried to choke the life out of him - the rage, the disgust, the betrayal. His limp form as Matt had left to find Mohinder's mother. It was the same as the painting he'd made months ago. He'd known this was going to happen. He'd thought that talking his father into letting him handle it would prevent it, but… it hadn't happened that way. He looked at his hands and saw Mohinder bleeding beneath them again as the circuit repeated.

He didn't know how many times it played though. Maury gave him a mental nudge, but Matt ignored him. Then there was the man's hand on his shoulder, warm and still. He pulled his eyes away from his bloody hands and looked at his father. The older man said, "There's an irrigation ditch. Go wash your hands." He jerked his chin and eyes to indicate outside the car, beyond Matt, and pushed him slightly. The younger man realized the car had stopped moving. Numbly, he got out and stumbled down the bank to the water.

He washed mechanically, watching as the blood colored the already muddy water. He hoped his friend survived. He hoped Molly was okay. He hoped his father wouldn't hurt her. He'd given up all hope of stopping Maury. He supposed there was a way, but he didn't bother to think about it. The man read his mind constantly enough that there was no point and even if there was, honestly, Matt didn't want to do it. His father had pulled him out of a pit, saved his life, and even if he'd taken Mohinder's… Matt couldn't think. He closed his eyes and shook his head. _Why didn't I do something when she came out with the gun? I froze up. I froze up!_

Matt slumped, on his knees next to the water. Tears filled his eyes and began to fall silently. He wanted to tell himself it didn't have to be that way, it was all his father's fault, but he'd seen Mohinder's face and felt his resolve. There was no way they were taking Molly from him without a fight. His father was right - once Mohinder knew they were using abilities, he would have done the same, with lethal consequences. But it had happened so fast! He wanted another chance. He wanted another chance at _everything!_ His chest constricted so much he could hardly breathe.

He remembered telling his dad a few years ago that Maury knew nothing about being a good father and at that very moment Matt had been absent from Janice, who was carrying his son. Matt had been in the process of wresting Molly from a coma Maury had put her in and no doubt, there was a good explanation for that too. But Matt hadn't waited and he hadn't listened and things had happened so fast. Then it was his father in a coma and Matt was sure he'd done the right thing. He had no idea what the right thing was anymore and he was pretty sure, now, that hadn't been the right thing **then**. Things were so much more complicated than he could understand.

_Even when I know the future, I can't fix the past._ He reached out and touched the water where another teardrop had made ripples. He ran his fingers through the tiny barrier between liquid and air, watching it flow and eddy and ripple. He sniffed and his shoulders shook. Ryan was dead. Patty had left him, happy to be rid of him, he suspected. Matty would never know him. Janice was afraid of him. His father couldn't relate to him without this hellish leash controlling him. Molly thought he was a villain. Mohinder would hate not only Matt now, but himself, assuming he didn't die. He put his wet hands on his knees and sobbed.

His life was ruined. His father had known it. That's why he'd restricted him from hurting himself. Matt would, if he had the chance. Several times he'd contemplated it. He couldn't do it intentionally. He stared at the water and tried to think of how he could have an accident. He felt a tug at his mind again and he shut his eyes. His father was calling him, no doubt having sensed the suicidal turn to his thoughts. After a long beat he dug in his pockets for a handkerchief. He found nothing, so wiped his face on his sleeve. He rose unsteadily to his feet and brushed off his knees.

He trudged back to the car, taking a deep breath and putting himself back together. His father would not react well to him looking upset. Matt got in the car as normally as he could. Maury started it without a word and drove off. It was a long, silent ride, broken only by Maury talking on the cell phone to the in-country agent assigned to support them.

They dropped the car at the airport, then walked until they found a taxi and took it into the city. Matt didn't ask why. Neither did Molly. They rendezvoused with the agent, who had a suitcase for Molly and several changes of clothes. She'd also lined up an appointment with a hair stylist. Molly's hair was soon cut short and tinted red, her simple native clothing replaced by fashionable western garb.

Maury bought her some reflective sunglasses and made her wear them, completing the disguise that would help them avoid the inevitable search. Maury gave her commands and explained her role while Matt stood next to a brick wall and stared vacantly at the bustling city. His mind was as empty as his gaze. It was easier that way.

He didn't notice when his father's attention shifted to him or when he stood before him. He might have even been talking to him - Matt didn't know. He didn't notice until Maury slapped him. He hadn't hit him hard, but it brought Matt back to reality, however unwillingly. He blinked and rubbed his cheek, looking sullenly at the old man.

"Pull yourself together, Matthew. I don't want any problems at the airport. No _accidents_ and you know what I mean. Molly can either be with **me**, or with **you**, and if you get yourself killed, then you know who that leaves her with. Do you understand me?"

Matt struggled to stay focused on the man. He was having trouble caring. Molly hated him anyway. Maury hit him again, harder this time. He still didn't care, but Molly squeaked. Matt jerked his head around and looked at her. She looked fearfully between the two of them. She didn't like them fighting. While Matt was looking at her, Maury put his hand on his chest and shoved him roughly against the wall. She made another sound and it cut through Matt like a knife, bringing clarity to his mind and pulling him out of his self-pity. He realized his father had pushed him back with the intention of provoking exactly this reaction in her, and in him.

_Yep, that's right. Is it working?_ the older man thought to him.

_Yeah._ Matt's eyes tracked towards Molly again. Maury had found something he cared about. Matt was surprised and vaguely relieved it was there to find._ I'll play along at the airport. Don't hurt her._

_I don't have to hurt her. I just have to hurt __**you**__._

Matt felt a wave of irritation and pushed Maury away physically. He couldn't touch him mentally without setting off the link. What Maury was doing reminded him of how he'd manipulated Matt before with Ryan, striking the defenseless man in order to push Matt into letting Maury establish the link with him. Now he was striking Matt to blackmail Molly into behaving. Matt frowned, but went along with it.

His father thought to him, _Good. Now get your head out of your ass and start thinking._ Out loud he said, "Let's get back to New York."

Hours later on the flight, Molly had her own breakdown. At first she huddled by herself in the seat, crying silently, then insisted she had to go to the bathroom. Matt and Maury both knew this was untrue, at least for the usual reason one went to the bathroom. Matt saw the expression on his father's face as he blocked her from getting out of their row of seats.

Maury told her, "Sit down, you selfish little bitch - and be quiet." He turned towards her and she shrank back from his unwarrantedly vicious comment.

Matt put his arms around her and pulled her to him, looking over her head at Maury in mute challenge. He'd seen his father set off by people crying before. She struggled free of him for a moment and looked back at the older man, then made a frightened sound at his visage and took refuge against Matt. She had to turn to someone.

_Please no, Pop. No! Let me handle it. I'll handle it. I've got this. I'll keep her quiet. It's okay. It's okay._ He stroked Molly's head. Maury bared his teeth at him and then turned away, clearly trying to calm himself down and avoid making things worse with his own outburst.

_It's okay, it's okay,_ Matt kept thinking, trying to project calm, assurance and acceptance. _It's going to be all right._

After over a minute, Maury thought to him,_ She can't hear you, Matt. The only one you're projecting to is me._ His father's mental tone was surprisingly gentle.

_Uh… erm._ Matt silenced himself, having no idea why he'd done that, more surprised still that it seemed to have worked. Maury was calm and no longer angry about Molly weeping. Matt put his mind to something else, not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth. He looked to the girl and gathered her against him.

He murmured to her, "I know this is terrible. I'm so sorry, Molly. I'm going to do what I can to help you." He drew strength from her need and resolve from her weakness. She sobbed quietly, shaking. Other passengers looked and expressed concern, but none of them interfered. Maury glared at any who looked likely to say anything and they abruptly found better things to do with their attention.

Matt was surprised they got to New York without any more incident than that. Maury had all the right paperwork for the girl, though her name was listed as Molly Jones. They went through customs without a hitch and took a taxi to the Petrelli house. Matt stared up at the place blankly. It looked like the sort of place a woman like Angela Petrelli would live, where people as privileged as Nathan and Peter Petrelli would have grown up.

"Hello there," Angela said to them after a dour-faced butler had seen them into the dining room. She was setting out some sandwiches in front of a variety of soda cans. "Matt, Molly - help yourselves. Maury, I need to speak with you separately."

He nodded and snagged a sandwich anyway as he followed Angela into some other room. Matt pulled out a chair and sank into it heavily. He hadn't eaten much for the last two days, between being nervous about the trip and upset about how things turned out afterwards. He pulled over a plate and put a sandwich on it. Molly did the same, watching him surreptitiously. He selected a can of soda and so did she. He smiled and opened it. She followed suit.

He looked over at her and she looked away, ignoring him pointedly. He smiled a little. Somehow, after all that had happened, she was still playful. It cheered him. He picked up his soda and drank. She looked back and said, "Matt… What he said… back in Chennai before we went to the airport… I don't want to live with him. Let me stay with you, please?"

He put the drink down. He didn't think he'd have much say in the matter. "I'll see what I can do." _Dad?_ he projected.

_Busy_, came back the curt reply.

Matt ate his sandwich, then went for a second one. By the time he was finishing, Maury came back in with Angela in tow. He looked at Molly and told her, "Go in there and do what Angela tells you to. Use your ability. She has a list of people you need to locate."

Molly had finished her sandwich earlier. She nodded silently and shot a look at Matt, who gave her a supportive nod. She went. Maury sat in her seat and put a sandwich on her plate for himself. He opened a Pepsi and pushed her root beer to the side. He set down a sheet of paper next to him. It had a dozen thumbnail pictures of people with a small block of text and vitals next to each.

Matt reached over and moved the paper so he could see it better. Maury tensed at the movement and Matt flinched. He realized he should have telegraphed the motion before doing it. Maury didn't lash out of him. He just picked up his soda and took a long, slow drink. Matt scanned down the pictures very briefly, enough to see he didn't recognize any of them. He pushed the list back slowly. _Sorry_, he thought.

_S'okay. I snap at you too much._

Matt's brows pulled together slowly and he looked at his father with a growing confusion. _Um… okay. I… I __**am**__ sorry. I won't forget again._

_Don't worry about it._

Matt tilted his head and gave himself a small shake. He took another drink of his soda. He wasn't worried as much as surprised. As he thought back on it, Maury had been less harsh since the episode on the plane. He thought it was probably best not to dwell on it and thought to the other man, _So,_ _are those the people she's finding?_ His mind referenced the paper Matt had looked at.

_No,_ his father answered. _That's my list. Hers is different. These are people the Company has locked up that Angela wants me to take a look at, rehabilitate if I can. They've been in too long._

_What are they in for?_

_Different stuff._

Matt took a deep breath and finished his second sandwich. He correctly interpreted the non-answer as a direction not to inquire further. He took a drink and pushed his plate away a little._ Okay. You said on the plane that I'd get details for the… for my assignment in Boston when we got here._

_Yeah. Let me get on that right now._ He pulled out his phone and dialed. "Hey, Bennet? … I'm back in New York with the package. Remember those partners we discussed before? … Uh-huh. Is tomorrow too soon? … Okay, yeah, that'd be fine. Where at? … Yeah, sure. I'll ask her, but if I don't call back, consider it good. I'll see you then. One o'clock. … Good." He hung up and looked away from Matt as Angela came into the room. "I'm going to interview partners for Matt here tomorrow. Is here okay?"

She frowned. "Yes. I'm going to have other work for you quite soon. We can talk afterwards if you're already here."

Maury nodded. "Yep. That's why I need to get him set up and cut loose as soon as possible." After a beat, he asked, "How's it going?" He gestured in the direction of the other room, where Molly was.

"I think the Walker system is back online. We need to make arrangements for long-term storage."

'_Storage_,' Matt thought in distaste. He frowned at the table and took a last drink out of his Dr. Pepper.

Maury said, "I'm going to leave her with Matt."

Matt twitched, surprised. He had assumed his father hadn't listened to the earlier conversation between himself and Molly, not if he'd been busy on another front. On the other hand, Maury had already discussed that she'd be staying with one of them.

Angela raised a brow. "Oh?" There was an unspoken challenge there, as if with Matt wasn't where she wanted Molly to be.

"Yeah." Maury answered it with a trace of defiance in his voice.

Angela looked past him at Matt, who looked back at her levelly. He had the odd impression his father was sticking up for him. She said, "Very well." After a moment she added, "I need to see if she's done yet." Angela turned and left again.

Matt cleared his throat and said to his father, "Thank you."

Maury looked at him and gave him an odd, half-smile. It was probably as close to a 'you're welcome' as he was likely to get. Matt nodded. He didn't need to hear it.


	25. The Beginning

**A/N: This is the end. The title is just my perverse sense of humor shining through (and if I decide to do a crossover, this **_**would**_** be the beginning, but I digress).**

The interviews went well enough. Matt felt a little weird though to be on the interviewing side of the table rather than the interviewee. It was a different perspective. _I'll never say the same thing in a job interview again. Though… I'll never have one again either, so kind of moot._

Maury gave Matt some direction on what to look for and a sheet of standard questions to ask. They covered how the agents they were interviewing had reacted to stress situations in the past, what they'd done when their morals and orders had conflicted and how they'd handled disagreements with partners - either co-workers or lovers, it didn't really matter. His father said, "There's no right or wrong answer for this stuff. There's just what you want in the person who has your back."

Maury read their mind. This was announced up front, as was the fact Matt was a telepath, though Matt focused on talking, not mind-reading. One person, Anita, was excused immediately for not being able to handle the idea of a partner from whom no secrets could be kept.

As she left, Matt asked, "What was she hiding?"

"Don't know. Didn't look. She wasn't thinking about it, which is smart."

"But… What if it's something bad for the Company?"

"It probably is. Matt, everyone's hiding something and most of it is bad for whatever or whoever they're near - that's why they're hiding it. I gave up giving a shit a long time ago. I thought we'd gone over how we can't make people act right?"

Matt rolled his eyes and left it alone.

The third of four interviews was with a man named David Wilcox. He'd been a recruit of Emile Danko, but no one seemed to hold that against him. Matt didn't recognize him, for which he was thankful. It might have been awkward otherwise. His combat training and background was a good compliment to Matt's - similar enough they could work together, but different enough they could learn a lot from one another.

Towards the end of the interview, Maury spoke up and said, "Have you ever had a run-in with a mentalist before?" At the man's look, Maury added, "A telepath, someone who could erase memories, alter perceptions, that sort of thing?"

David said, "There was someone who could make illusions of small objects… and there was a hypnotist." He tried to think if there were any others that fit the fairly broad profile the director was giving him. There were, but he wasn't sure what Maury was getting at.

The older man said, "That hypnotist. What could he do?"

David shrugged. "He hypnotized people. When they were under, he could tell them to do things like… like I've heard you can, sir." His eyes darted back and forth between Maury and Matt uncomfortably. "But he had to put people under first."

Maury nodded. "And he put you under."

"It…" _wasn't a big deal._ David's expression shifted. Matt could hear him scrambling for a lie to cover his leave from work, the retreat and the therapy. It was embarrassing to him. He'd missed the last portion of Danko's operations because of it, which at the time had seemed very bad for his career - not so much now. He straightened in his seat. "Um. Yes, but… that was authorized contact in the course of the mission, to ascertain the limits of his ability and differentiate him from normal practitioners." He rattled off the professional jargon for taking a fall on orders. It hadn't exactly been a suicide mission, but it was close. He'd followed orders and it hadn't turned out well for him.

Maury smiled thinly. "Thank you for not bothering to lie to me. What happened to him? The hypnotist."

"I don't know. He was taken in." _I was kind of in a coma at the time._

"What happened to _you?_"

"Sir?"

"What did he tell you to do?"

"I don't know, sir. I don't think there was anything… he just put me under and they couldn't wake me up." _I wonder if he could find out?_ A wash of emotion and uncertainty ran through him as he thought about waking up over a week later. It was weeks after that before he stopped spacing gaps of time. He'd never really felt like himself since that mission, but of course life had gone on and so had he. It had been years now.

Maury said, "Put your hands on the table, spread your fingers, relax. I'll find out."

Matt felt his father's shift in presence as he went into David's mind. After a beat, Matt followed. It was unaccountably blank and featureless. It reminded him of Brandon's mind. _He's… he's been…_

Maury finished for him. _Hollowed out. Yep. Only partial. He might recover more, or he might not. In any case, he doesn't have squat for defenses._

_You saw this during the interview?_

_Sort of. He was wrong, too transparent. I thought it was a front at first, but I checked and it wasn't and he didn't even notice me checking._

_I saw you fade out for a few minutes. I wondered what you were doing._

_Yeah. _Maury poked around at David's memories of the hypnotist. There wasn't much to see. Finally he thought, _Looks like he told him to kill himself._

_Yeah? He doesn't seem suicidal._

_He's not. He won. Cost him a lot though._

Matt thought, _So this other guy was a hypnotist… a telepath hypnotist?_

_I guess so. Abilities take a lot of manifestations. Some people can only read minds. Some can only give commands. Some can only give commands under certain circumstances, like talking to you or touching you or wearing their lucky shirt. It's just a mental block, but it limits them anyway. Arthur thinks everything is a mental block and we're really gods, but he's a fruitcake._ On that note, Maury exited and Matt followed. David blinked at him and Maury snapped his fingers. It turned David off like he had flipped a switch.

Matt's brow furrowed, "That's… weird, but let's get him out of here."

His father laughed. "What? You think he can't work because he has a mind-power induced disability? He's perfect for you."

Matt frowned, realizing his father was comparing his dyslexia to whatever you'd call what was wrong with David. He shook his head. "That's… that's not what I need. I need a partner who can resist me, in case I… in case I say something I shouldn't. Maybe he won against that hypnotist, but there's not enough left there to fight his way out of a paper bag, mentally."

Maury chuckled and looked at him speculatively. "No, Matt, I think this is exactly what you need, right here." He pointed at the man. "You don't need any flex or a safety net. I think if you can push someone a little, you will. Then a little more and a little more. This guy's a constant reminder of what can go wrong. Besides, if it comes to it, he'll take any command you give him literally, totally and completely."

The older man puckered his lips. "There's ways to use that without screwing someone up if you have a light touch - I've seen it done, had it done to me, in fact. But it takes a very, very light touch. Maybe you'll learn that. Or you can just keep your paws off his head and he'll be fine."

Matt exhaled. "You're saying if I'm with someone who can resist me, you think I'll eventually slip because I think I can get away with it."

"Yep. You can't get away with it with him. Short of finding someone you can't take at all, which isn't going to happen at your power level - not for a normal - I think this is the best you're going to get."

"What makes you think I won't just make him into a puppet? Seems like it'd be pretty easy."

Maury smiled. "It's always going to be easy, Matt. I'll be around from time to time. There's no way you're going to keep another zombie." He snorted. "Flesh puppets. If you can't control yourself, then I want to know. There's stronger measures I can take than what I've already done to you. Speaking of which, there's something I'd been intending to do for a few days now."

Matt pulled his head back and pressed his lips into a thin line. He didn't like his father's expression and given the conversation, he expected new orders. He got them, but it wasn't what he'd expected - not at all.

Maury said, "You can ignore any of my previous orders to you. You have your free will."

Matt blinked at him, unsure. "What?" When his father didn't answer, he cocked his head and said, "Any of them? All of them?" He raised his brows.

"All of them."

Matt glanced around the room and then at the floor, trying to think of what he'd do, what it meant. His head snapped back up. "What about the link?"

"That stays. I'm not stupid."

"Wha… then… you can just do it all over again!" Matt realized he was being ungrateful. That he'd gotten any sort of concession like this out of his father was amazing. He sat up straighter suddenly and waved Maury off. "No, no, thank you. I'm sorry, this is something. I appreciate it. I do."

Maury snorted slightly. He knew exactly how authentic Matt's gratitude was, which wasn't much. It was a little. He asked him, "Do you want to work for the Company? I really should have done this before we set up the interviews."

Matt glanced at his father several times, scratching his lower lip uneasily. _I could go wherever I wanted, do pretty much whatever I want. I could go back to Janice... _He wrung his hands together nervously, thinking that he didn't deserve to put himself back in her life - she didn't deserve the disruption he'd be. There was no guarantee it wouldn't go the same way it had before. As far as that went, he thought, the only guarantee was that if he kept working with his father, he'd stay sane, even if he wasn't necessarily happy.

His father looked away briefly and offered, "Salary's good. I like to think we make a difference. Even if we don't, you at least have an inside track on what's going on."

After a long silence, Matt said, "Yeah." He didn't have to elaborate. Maury knew he was agreeing to the job, not just to what he had said.

Matt glanced over at David, his probable new partner. He was still turned off. "Okay. Can you… let him go?"

"Sure." He snapped his fingers and David blinked back to awareness. He looked at Maury unsure, then at Matt.

He wasn't sure what had happened, but he decided to be polite and treat it as his own lapse. Wilcox said, "I'm sorry. I must have zoned out there for a moment."

Maury said smoothly, "No problem. The bad news is you're brain damaged and it's permanent." Matt gave his father a shocked look, though really he should have become accustomed to his tactlessness by now. "The good news is you're still better off than most of the schmucks out there."

"Uh… okay." David took it well, considering. _That answers a lot of questions, actually._

"So," Maury said, "You can go back to your assignment. We'll be in touch through Mr. Bennet if we select you."

David left thinking that was unlikely. His last thoughts as he went out were about reconsidering his career choices.

------

A few days later, Matt moved into a furnished, two-bedroom apartment in Boston with Molly. David had his own flat down the hall. He'd been surprised and pleased to be promoted into one of the special paired teams. Molly had been enrolled in a local private school that didn't ask any questions after Matt visited them. She was coming in right at the start of the semester, not even missing any classes. After getting food, toiletries and sundries moved in, there was nothing to do but go to work.

David and Matt set up a peg board in the dining room and put photos of their first targets on it: Olivia Dunham, Walter Bishop and his son, Peter Bishop. Olivia was listed as a possible precognitive, Walter was having enhanced intelligence and Peter as "unknown, high probability of having an ability, exercise extreme caution, do not approach."

Matt looked at the pictures of the trio and said, "Bishop. Any relation to Bob Bishop? He was a scientist with the Company, a big deal. Mohinder worked with him a lot."

David opened the files they'd been given and scanned through it. Obviously he'd be doing the reading for the pair. "Hm. There's stuff here on Walter's wife… bunch of things redacted… ah, here, his father was named Robert Bischoff, came from Germany during WWII… and… redacted." He flipped through a few sheets. "Pages and pages about his experiments, on his kid, on all kinds of people, but next to nothing we're allowed to see about his family."

"Redacted? You mean blacked out? Let me see that." Matt reached out and took the file from him. He nodded. "I've seen this pattern before."

"Yeah?" David asked.

"Yeah. Experimenting on your kids, having some Nazi idea of making better people… and everything about it blacked out in the Company file. It's what they do when the information's really important. They want you to know it's there, but they're not going to tell you what it is. You know… I'm kind of thinking it's our assignment here to find out." He smiled at David.

Wilcox smiled back. "Let's check it out, then."

**A/N #2: Okay, that's it. If anyone's burning for a Fringe/Heroes crossover, let me know. Otherwise, consider this an advertisement for The Romances of Maury Parkman and the as-yet-untitled sequel to Shattered Identity (yes, I'm still working on it… but the muse has been unkind to me lately).**

**Read and review, pretty please. Reviews have a direct effect on encouraging me to write more.**


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